Evaporators have established themselves as one of the most important

equipment that should be used whenever food manufacturers wants to increase the
concentration of a food product, especially beverages. Its applications are not only
limited to food manufacturing process but also includes its usage in refrigerators, and
other cooling appliances. In particular, there are eight types of evaporators that were
discussed in the reporting, namely: open kettle/pan, horizontal-tube natural circulation,
vertical-type natural circulation, long-tube vertical-type, falling-film type, force-circulation
type, agitated-film evaporator, and open-pan solar evaporator.
Among the discussed types of evaporators, the first one, open kettle/pan is the
simplest of them all. It is the easiest to assemble, and operate, not only that, this type of
evaporator is inexpensive. However, accompanying its ease of usage is its bad heat
economy as it is just a pan or kettle that is situated directly from a heat source such as
stove where temperatures cannot be controlled.
Horizontal-tube, and vertical-tube natural circulation evaporators are almost the
same as they both does not employ mechanical agitation systems and relies only on the
natural circulation of the liquid inputted when being boiled. Both of the aforementioned
types of evaporators are not suitable for viscous fluids for this reason. Vertical-type
natural circulation evaporator is also called as “short-tube evaporators”. Differences
between the two are the placements of their tubes, one horizontal while the other is
vertical, and that the substance that goes through the tubes. In horizontal-tube, it is the
steam that enters the tubes while the opposite is what occurs in vertical-type.
Another type of evaporators is the long-tube vertical-type which takes advantage
of the formation of vapor bubbles to bring the fluids inputted to high velocities. Unlike
the first evaporators discussed, liquids in these evaporators are not recirculated Tubes
utilized in this type are those that ranges between three to ten meters long.
Falling-film type evaporators are variations of the long-tube type wherein unlike
the long-tube, the entrance of the feed for falling-film type is situated on the top of the
evaporators where a film-like flow occurs before going down the tubes. Vapor-liquid
separation takes place at the bottom. This type of evaporator is widely applied for
concentrating heat-sensitive materials such as fruit juices as its holding time is
comparably small while having high heat-transfer coefficients.
Forced-circulation type, and agitated-film type evaporators uses external forces
to forcibly circulate the liquids to be concentrated. This is a must to ensure the
homogeneity and easiness of heat-transfer between the adjacent molecules of the feed.
Forced-circulation type commonly employs pump to help facilitate the recirculation of
the feed to achieve the desired concentration while agitated-film applies mechanical
systems. Such types of evaporators are very useful for highly viscous fluids.
Last on the types of evaporators is the open-pan solar evaporator. Open-pan
solar evaporators are similar to open kettle/pan just with the source of heat being the
sun. This type of evaporator is deemed to be very old and is usually used by seaside
dwellers in producing salts from the sea.
Usually involved in problems involving the use of evaporators, different methods
of operation of evaporators were also discussed. Methods of operation are generally
divided into single-effect, and multiple-effect, with multiple-effect also having different
classifications under it. Single-effect evaporators have a steam economy ratio of 1:1 or
1 steam for one feed. Assuming that we wish to increase the concentration of a juice
from 50% to 25%, single-effect evaporators will concentrate the feed in only one
evaporator. This is often used when the required capacity of the whole operation is
relatively small, and the cost of steam is comparably cheap to the price of the
evaporator. This is also employed in cases where the feed will not be destroyed despite
the changes in its boiling point.
Multiple-effect evaporators, on the other hand, utilizes the vapor produced by the
first-effect and uses it to heat the feed the second time in a different evaporator. Steam
economy ratio in this case increased to 3:1. This operation is suitable to feeds that may
get destroyed at high temperatures because as the boiling point decreases by effect,
the temperature also decreases.
Forward-feed, backward-feed, and parallel-feed are the different types under the
multiple-effect operation. While the forward-feed, the feed starts to enter at the first
effect which is the hottest, the feed enters at the third effect (coldest) in the backward-
feed multiple effect evaporators. In parallel-feed, instead of concentrating only one feed,
three different feeds are being concentrated simultaneously while maintaining the same
steam economy.