EVAPORADORES: economia energética em sistemas de evaporação

Abstract

Evaporation is one of the most used unit operations in the food industry. The concentration of many products is done in this way through the use of evaporators as, for example, in the food, beverage, paint and pharmaceutical industries. Known as. large consumers of thermal energy, evaporators have been studied in recent years with the aim of reducing energy consumption. Some techniques, such as evaporation in multiple effects and the use of condensate can bring good results, when analyzing only this unitary operation, isolated from the process. However, better results can be obtained when evaporators are not studied in isolation, but as part of a process. Usually, evaporator batteries are used in multiple effects, organized according to different flow configurations of the processed solutions. In the analysis of these systems, the literature on Unit Operations presents proposals for simplified methodologies, normally ignoring the effects of the increase in the solution's boiling temperature, with good results for systems in which they are small. Thus, this work seeks to show steam saving systems more used in evaporators, with the use of these economizers we will have a reduction in the consumption of boiler steam in the evaporation process.