Conical centrifuge with continuous action

A centrifuge for the separation of a liquid and a solid in a suspension of said solid in said liquid, said centrifuge comprising:

• an upright cylindrical housing having a conical bottom formed with a discharge fitting for discharging said solid;
• an inner cylinder disposed coaxially within said housing and provided with a conical bottom having a discharge fitting for discharging liquid;
• a cover closing said housing at the top thereof;
• a generally cylindrical bearing box mounted on said cover and extending coaxially downwardly into said inner cylinder;
• a single drive shaft journaled in said bearing box and having a lower end within said inner cylinder below said bearing box and an upper end extending above said cover said single shaft minimizing the requirement for seals within said centrifuge;
• a motor mounted on said cover and operatively connected to said upper end of said shaft for driving same;
• a rotor connected to said lower end of said shaft within said inner cylinder and formed with an upwardly diverging conical sieve reaching substantially to the top of said inner cylinder whereby solids migrating over the upper edge of said sieve pass around said inner cylinder into the conical bottom of said housing while liquid traversing said sieve passes into the conical bottom of said inner cylinder;
• a pipe coaxially surrounding said bearing box and spaced therefrom, said pipe being mounted on said bearing box at the lower end thereof by a plurality of generally flat vertical vanes, said vanes extending tangentially from the outer surface of the lower end of said bearing box to the inner surface of the lower end of said pipe;
• a plurality of helical arc blades disposed on the lower end of the outer surface of said pipe;
• said vanes and blades cooperatively functioning to uniformly distribute said suspension over the inner surface of said conical sieve;
• an inlet for said suspension opening into said pipe, said pipe being downwardly open toward said rotor at the bottom of said pipe.