Soil loam soil with a small amount of organic material is considered "ideal", inasmuch as fertilizers or manure are currently used to mitigate nutrient losses due to crop yields in the long term. The mineral constituents of a loam soil might be 40% sand, 40% silt and the balance 20% clay by weight. Soil texture affects soil behaviour, in particular, its retention capacity for nutrients (e.g., cation exchange capacity) and water. Sand and silt are the products of physical and chemical weathering of the parent rock; clay, on the other hand, is most often the product of the precipitation of the
Sand filter solid-liquid separation such as settling tanks, self-cleaning screen filters, hydrocyclones and centrifuges. There are several kinds of depth filter, some employing fibrous material and others employing granular materials. Sand bed filters are an example of a granular loose media depth filter. They are usually used to separate small amounts (<10 parts per million or <10 g per cubic metre) of fine solids (<100 micrometres) from aqueous solutions. In addition, they are usually used to purify the fluid rather than capture the solids as a valuable material. Therefore they find most of their uses in liquid effluent (wastewater) treatment. Sand bed