Advances in Direct Contact Evaporator Design

✍ Scribed by P.L.C. Lage; F.B. Campos

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 101 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0930-7516
• DOI: 10.1002/ceat.200401760

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Direct contact evaporators are nonisothermal bubble columns where a hot gas, usually obtained by combustion, is used to heat and vaporize the solvent of a given solution that needs to be concentrated. The design of such equipment has been relied on experimental data or on a simplified method that assumes that the gas leaves the evaporator at equilibrium with the liquid phase, giving no information about the necessary bubbling height to attain such equilibrium conditions. Recent advances in the heat and mass transfer processes during the formation and ascension of superheated bubbles together with simple mass and energy balances in the liquid phase and gas distributor system were used to develop a more detailed design procedure. The accuracy of both design procedures are compared to available experimental data in a direct contact evaporator operating in semibatch mode. The new design method agreed well with the experimental data.