Background

Evaporation is an operation used to remove a liquid from a solution, suspension, or

emulsion by boiling off some of the liquid. It is thus a thermal separation, or thermal
concentration, process. We define the evaporation process as one that starts with a liquid
product and ends up with a more concentrated, but still liquid and still pumpable
concentrate as the main product from the process. There are actually a few instances where
the evaporated, volatile component is the main product, but we will not discuss that here.
In most cases it is essential that the product be subject to minimal thermal degradation
during the evaporation process, requiring that temperature and time exposure must be
minimized. This and other requirements brought on by the physical characteristics of the
processed product have resulted in the development of an enormous range of different
evaporator types. Additional demands for energy efficiency and minimized environmental
impact have driven development toward very innovative plant configurations and
equipment design. In the field of thermal separation / concentration technology,
evaporation plants are widely used for concentration of liquids in the form of solutions,
suspensions, and emulsions.

The major requirement in the field of evaporation technology is to maintain the quality of
the liquid during evaporation and to avoid damage to the product. This may require the
liquid to be exposed to the lowest possible boiling temperature for the shortest period of
time. This and numerous other requirements and limitations have resulted in a wide
variation of designs available today. In almost all evaporators the heating medium is steam,
which heats a product on the other side of a heat transfer surface. Falling Film Evaporators,
Rising Film Evaporators, Forced Circulation Evaporators, Plate Evaporators, Thermal and
Mechanical Vapor Recompression (TVR & MVR) are typical examples of several types of
evaporators used in industries.
Armfield evaporators are useful in various industrial and research applications for efficiently
concentrating solutions by removing water through evaporation. They are often used in
industries like food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals to concentrate solutions,
extract valuable components, or reduce the volume of waste. By efficiently concentrating
solutions and reducing waste volumes, they can contribute to more sustainable and
environmentally friendly processes. Overall, Armfield evaporators are versatile tools that
help improve process efficiency, save energy, and enable precise control over the
concentration of solutions.
In falling film evaporators, liquid, and vapors flow downwards in parallel flow. The liquid to
be concentrated is preheated to boiling temperature. An even thin film enters the heating
tubes via a distribution device in the head of the evaporator, flows downward at boiling
temperature, and is partially evaporated. This gravity-induced downward movement is
increasingly augmented by the co-current vapor flow. Falling film evaporators can be
operated with extremely low temperature differences between the heating media and the
boiling liquid, and they also have short product contact times, typically just a few seconds
per pass. These characteristics make the falling film evaporator particularly suitable for
heat-sensitive products.

Most evaporators are heated by steam condensing on metal tubes. The material to be
evaporated flows inside the tubes. Usually the steam is at low pressure, below 3 atm abs;
and the boiling liquid is under moderate vacuum, at pressure down to 0.05 atm abs.
Reducing the boiling temperature of the liquid increases the difference between steam and
the boiling liquid and thus increases the heat transfer rate in the evaporator.
When a single evaporator is used, the vapor from the boiling liquid is condensed and
discarded. This method is called single effect evaporation, and it utilizes steam ineffectively.
To evaporate 1 kg of water from solution needs 1 to 3 kg of steam. If the vapor from one
evaporator is fed into a second evaporator and the vapor from the second is then sent to a
condenser, the operation becomes double effect. The heat in the original steam is reused in
the second effect, and the evaporation achieved by a unit mass of steam fed to the first
effect is doubled. Additional effects can be added in the same manner. The general method
of increasing the evaporation per kilogram of steam by using a series of evaporators is called
multiple effect evaporation.
Figure1a: Figure2a:
Schematic diagram of rising film Evaporator Schematic diagram of falling film evaporator

However, the emphasis of our research is the Rising Film evaporator, which exploits the
"thermo-siphon" theory of operation. Feed enters the bottom of the heating tubes and as it
heats, steam begins to form. The ascending force of this steam produced during the boiling
causes liquid and vapors to flow upwards in parallel flow. At the same time the production
of vapor increases, and the product is pressed as a thin film on the walls of the tubes, and
the liquid rises upwards. Steam inside the tubes and the solution outside the tubes. This
type of unit is suitable only for low-viscosity solutions that do not deposit scale on the heat-
transfer surfaces. This co-current upward movement has the beneficial effect of creating a
high degree of turbulence in the liquid. This is helpful during evaporation of highly viscous
products and products that tend to foul the heating surfaces. Usually there must be a hot
temperature difference between the heating and boiling sides of this type of evaporator.
Otherwise, the energy of the vapor flow is not sufficient to convey the liquid and to produce
the rising film. The length of the boiling tubes will typically not exceed 23 ft. This type of
evaporator is often used with product recirculation, where some of the formed concentrate
is reintroduced back to the feed inlet to produce sufficient liquid loading inside the boiling
tubes.

Post experimental procedure