Concentrating evaporators – Processes
Patent
1992-04-07
1995-05-16
Manoharan, Virginia
Concentrating evaporators
Processes
159 261, 159 262, 159 271, 159901, 426520, 202237, B01D 106
Patent
active
054157323
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This application is the United States National Phase of PCT/EP90/01194, filed Jul. 20, 1990.
DESCRIPTION
This invention relates to a method of concentrating high-viscosity flowable foodstuff, particularly but not solely useful to continuously concentrate tomato and fruit juices and pulps, generic pulped foodstuff, and the like flowable foodstuff products having a high viscosity and a fiber content which may be quite high.
The invention also concerns an apparatus for implementing this method.
The method and apparatus of this invention will solve in particular the problem of providing high concentrations of flowable foodstuff as outlined above, which concentrations usually associate with a high viscosity and low heat conductivity. In this respect, mention may be made to tomato juice concentration to yield concentrates.
For simplicity of expression and while excluding all and any limitations, flowable foodstuff products of the types mentioned above will be referred to hereinafter as "liquid mixtures" irrespective of their nature and stiffness, and the liquid to be evaporated as the "diluent".
In some prior arrangements, concentration has been carried out by boiling the liquid mixture to evaporate the diluent in vats heated by means of steam pipe coils or some other heating arrangements.
Such systems cannot afford high concentration and stiffness of the liquid mixture, due to difficulties with circulating and removing vapor from the concentrate, such difficulties appearing as the concentration and related viscosity of the liquid mixture increase.
In other prior arrangements, commonly termed downflow film systems and including a vertical tube nest heat exchanger, the liquid mixture flows down the individual tubes without completely filling them, that is, runs across their inner walls leaving their central portion unoccupied where vapor is released and then exhausted from one end of the tubes.
However, such prior systems are only effective to concentrate highly flowable liquid mixtures and unsuited to provide high concentrations, especially if the liquid mixture contains fibrous matter.
In yet another and more frequently employed arrangement, concentration is accomplished by heating the liquid mixture inside the tubes laid into a nest configuration.
With such systems, the liquid mixture effluent stream from each individual tube meet inside a header, wherein they mixed into a net stream which is then supplied to a separator, often of the cyclone type, wherein the vapor is released from the liquid mixture which, as a result, becomes concentrated.
Some of the mixture concentrate is tapped off to subsequent process steps, whereas the remainder is returned to the tube nest to undergo a further concentration cycle, and so forth.
It should be noted that the liquid mixture stream exiting each individual tube has a markedly higher surface temperature than either its core temperature or the substantially uniform temperature of the liquid mixture being supplied to the separator and resulting from the individual streams from the tube nest tubes being merged and mixed together.
In these prior systems, therefore, the vapor is separated from the liquid mixture based on the temperature of the net stream being fed into the separator, which temperature is, as mentioned, lower than the surface temperatures of the individual streams of liquid mixture issuing from the tube nest tubes.
It should be further noted that within the separator, even if of the usual cyclone type, the vapor should be released from the entire mass of liquid mixture, and therefore also from the remotest portions from the vaporization surface, thereby a higher temperature of the mixture becomes necessary to provide for difficult release of the vapor from the deepest layers thereof.
The method of this invention, particularly useful to concentrate a highly viscous flowable foodstuff (liquid mixture) which may contain fibrous matter, is of a type which consists of heating a continuous flow of said flowable foodstuff by causing it to flow, under a so-called full
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Manoharan Virginia
Rossi & Catelli S.p.A.
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