PHYSICAL SEPARATION PROCESSES

ECH3118
FAIZAH MD YASIN

Evaporation
 LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. To explain the operations of various evaporators

2. To perform heat and mass balances for evaporators
3. To describe the effect of processing variables on evaporators
operations
4. To apply Duhring chart and nomograph for boiling-point
elevations for boiling temperature estimations
What is Evaporation?
• is a unit operation that consists of the elimination of water of
a fluid food by means of vaporization or boiling

• Evaporation is the removal of solvent as a vapor from a

solution or slurry

• Evaporation is used for concentration of aqueous solutions,

it involves removal of water from solution by boiling the
liquor in suitable vessel called evaporator and withdrawing
the vapor
 Purposes of Evaporation

• Concentrate liquid foods

• Energy savings in subsequent operations (eg. spray drying)
• Reduces weight (and volume)
Energy savings in storage and transportation
• Reduces water activity (preservation)
• Changes flavor and/or color (caramelized syrups in baking)
Products: Salt, sugar, milk, juices, tomato paste, hard candies,
purees
• Prepare for the next Unit operation – drying, crystallisation etc.
• Reduces deteriorative chemical reactions
• Better microbiological stability
• Recovery of solvent
 What happens during Evaporation?

• Boiling point of solution rises

– Due to increase in solid content

• ∆T between steam and product decreases

– Due to steam temperature remaining constant and
product temperature (boiling temperature) increasing

• Rate of heat transfer decreases

– Due to ∆T between steam and product decreasing
Evaporator
Industrial Evaporators
 Industrial Applications

• Food Industry
• Corn Industry
• Chemical Industry
• Waste Water Treatment
• Pharmaceutical Industry
 Examples

Concentration of milk to produce condensed milk

Concentration of juices

Concentration of NaOH, NaCl from aqueous solutions to produce

salt.

Ether recovery from fat extraction

Types of Evaporators
 Evaporator Configurations
for Multiple Effect
Forward-feed evaporator
Feed is hot and final product
is temperature sensitive

Backward-feed evaporator
Cold fresh feed, pump is
required, and final product is
highly viscous
 Processing factors - liquid
characteristic
 Liquid concentration -> relates to viscosity and heat
transfer
 Solubility
 Temperature and Pressure,
 Boiling temperature is inversely proportional to
pressure.
 Boiling points may increase as solution get
concentrated (boiling point rise)
 Temperature sensitivity of material (biomaterial)
 Foaming -> will determine the height of your
freeboard in the Design
 Solubility of materials -> May be the limit to the
concentration that you can achieve.
 Scale deposits -> decrease your heat transfer
coefficient.
 Processing Factors

Liquid concentration
In evaporation, concentration of liquid increase, thus viscosity will also increase
resulting in decreasing of overall heat transfer coefficient. So, additional agitation
is required.

Solubility
Solubility is increasing with temperature. However, as evaporation continues,
liquid solution will become more and more concentrated (saturated) and solubility
will exceed its limit.
Temperature sensitivity of materials
Products very sensitive to high temperature, i.e. protein and pharmaceutical
materials, may destroyed and degraded. Use vacuum instead to lower the boiling
point.

Foaming and frothing

Liquid solutions such as caustic solutions and skim milk. These foam and froth
accompany water vapor resulting in entrainment losses.
P&T
As T increase, solution will become more concentrated, resulting in increasing of
solution boiling point. Elevation or boiling-point-rise (BPR).

Scale deposition and material of construction deposit solid materials on heating

surfaces resulting in decreasing of overall heat transfer coefficient, U.

Suitable material to minimize corrosion.

 Trade-Off
Feed temperature, Tf- if cold, some of steam is used to heat up the feed to the
boiling point. If feed is under pressure/vacuum and Tf is above the boiling point,
additional vaporization is obtained, flash of hot feed.

Operating Pressure- if in vacuum, high ΔT can be obtained, resulting large

decrease in heating surface area, A.

Steam pressure- increasing steam pressure will increase ΔT, resulting in low A
and low capital cost. However the price for high-pressure steam is more costly.
Basic principles
 Driving force and Result

Driving force: temperature difference in between

steam chest temperature and product temperature
 Result: volatile solvent is removed from the feed
 Solution(high volatile solvent+non volatile solute)
 Concentrate(non volatile solute)
 Boiling Point Rise
When feed solution is no longer dilute, thermal properties of
solution may differ from those of pure water.

The concentration of feed is very high, thus the heat

capacity and boiling point are much higher than those for
water.

The boiling-point-rise, BPR is usually given in terms of

fraction of solute, x or by using empirical law such as
Dühring’s rule for sodium hydroxide.
Dühring lines for aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide.
Enthalpy Concentration Chart

Heat is evolved as feed solution become more concentrated.

Hold similar concepts of heat-of-solution.

Amount of heat added depends on type of substance and amount

of water.

Usually given in terms of fraction of solute, x (for heat capacity) or

straight away from enthalpy concentration chart such as that for
sodium hydroxide-water.
Enthalpy-concentration chart for the system NaOH-water
 Type of evaporators

Self exploration : Search the various operations of evaporators

1. Natural/forced circulation evaporator

2. Falling film evaporator
3. Rising film (Long Tube Vertical) evaporator
4. Climbing and falling-film plate evaporator
5. Multiple-effect evaporators
 Design configuration

Multi effect
Single stage
 Heat Transfer Coefficient, h

 A coefficient which indicates the amount of heat flow

that is exchanged across a unit area of a medium or
system in a unit amount of time with a unit of
temperature difference between the boundary of the
system.

 S.I. unit W m-2 K-1.

 Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient, U

 In cases of combined heat transfer for a heat exchanger,

there are two values for h.

 Convective heat transfer coefficient for the fluid film

inside the tubes

 Convective heat transfer coefficient for the fluid film

outside the tubes.

 The thermal conductivity (k) and thickness (Dx) of the

tube wall must also be accounted for.

 So an additional term (Uo), called the overall heat

transfer coefficient, must be used instead.
Mass & energy balances
• Heat transfer
• COMPONENT MASS BALANCE

• SYSTEM HEAT BALANCE

 Effect of processing variables

1. Feed temperature
2. Pressure
3. Steam pressure
4. boiling point rise ( BPR)
Design of an Evaporation System
• For each effect, determine steam requirement
(ms) by performing
– Mass balance
– Solids balance
– Energy balance
• Use Q = UA(ΔT) to determine area required
for heat transfer
Factors Affecting Rate and
Economics of Evaporation
• Fouling
– Burn-on of product components on heat transfer
surface
• Heat transfer coefficient on the product &
steam
sides (hi & ho)
• Thermal resistance of the wall (Δx/kA)
• Viscosity of product
• Entrainment (air) and foaming
• Corrosion
• ΔT between steam and the boiling product
 Working examples

• Example 8.4-1
• Example 8.4-2
• Example 8.4-3
• Tutorial 1
EXAMPLE 8.4-2.
Use of Duhring Chart for Boiling-Point Rise
As an example of use of the chart, the pressure in an evaporator is
given as 25.6 kPa (3.72 psia) and a solution of 30% NaOH is being
boiled. Determine the boiling temperature of the NaOH solution and
the boiling-point rise BPR of the solution over that of water at the
same pressure.
Solution:
From the steam tables in Appendix A.2, the boiling point of water at 25.6 kPa is
65.6°C. From Fig. 8.4-2 for 65.6°C (l50°F) and 30% NaOH, the boiling point of the
NaOH solution is 79.5oC (l75°F). The boiling-point rise is 79.5 - 65.6=13.9°C (25°F).

In Perry and Green (P2) a chart is given to estimate the boiling-point rise of a large
number of common aqueous solutions used in chemical and biological processes. In
addition to the common salts and solutes, such as NaNO3 , NaOH, NaCI, and H2S04,
the biological solutes sucrose, citric acid, kraft solution, and glycerol are given. These
biological solutes have quite small boiling-point-rise values compared to those of
common salts.
EXAMPLE 8.4-3. Evaporation of an NaOH Solution
An evaporator is used to concentrate 4536 kg/h (10000 Ibm/h) of a
20% solution of NaOH in water entering at 60°C (140°F) to a
product of 50% solids. The pressure of the saturated steam used is
172.4 kPa (25 psia) and the pressure in the vapor space of the
evaporator is 11.7 kPa (1.7 psia).
The overall heat-transfer coefficient is 1560 W/m2.K (275 btu/h
ft2.oF). Calculate the steam used, the steam economy in kg
vaporized/kg steam used, and the heating surface area in m2
•