Evaporator Mass and Energy Balance, and Mechanical Design - Essay Example

As the discussion outlines that evaporation is a plant operation used to concentrate a solution or a liquid of a nonvolatile solute and a volatile solvent, which many at times we use water. A portion of the solvent is vaporized to produce three products i.e. concentrated solution, slurry or thick and viscous liquid. Evaporation can be confused with drying but it differs from drying in that the residue is a flowing liquid instead of a sticky solid material. Evaporation on the other hand is different from distillation in that there is no deliberate attempt to separate the vapors into individual components.

This essay highlights that evaporation is one of the most energy consuming processes within most industries including dairy, food and chemical industries, it is most essential that evaporation be approached in regard to economical energy utilization and effectiveness of the process. In addition, evaporator should be safe to operate and offer no negative environmental impact. It is possible to achieve the above when equipment manufacturer is able to offer a full selection of evaporation technology and systems developed to accommodate various product characteristics, the percent of concentration required, and regional energy costs.

 Achieving control of most chemical/industrial evaporator systems is quite simple. However, with hygienic evaporators the control is somewhat more complicated due to the need to start up, operate, shut down and then clean at quite frequent intervals.. per P&ID Piping and Instrumentation Diagram PHA Preliminary Hazard Analysis PLC Programmable Logic Controller MP Main Product PNCB P-Nitro Chloro Benzene DFC Direct fixed cost Table of figures Figure 1: Multiple effect evaporation with thermo-compression Figure 2: Simplified flow diagram of Evaporator of pharmaceutical plant Figure 3: Relationship between evaporation ratio (e) and concentrations of Feed (Products) and concentrate (GEA 2012).

Figure 4: counter-flow evaporative cooler Figure 5: The Process Flow diagram Figure 6: Engineering line diagram for the evaporator (GEA 2012) Contents Design Objective 2 Executive Summary 2 Glossary 3 Table of figures 5 Chapter 1: Introduction 7 Chapter 2: Process options and selection 9 Multiple effect evaporation: 11 Vapour recompression 11 Designs 12 15 Chapter 3: Plant mass and energy balances 15 Mass balance 17 Energy Balance 21 Chapter 4: Detailed design 26 Evaporator’s mechanical Design 26 Feed pump power consumption 27 The cooler and Cooling System 28 Chapter 5: Process Safety Considerations 32 Chapter 6: Environmental Impact Statement and Sustainability 33 Chapter 7: Economic Appraisal 35 Input Item 42 Quantity 42 Unit cost 42 Total 42 Acetic acid 42 584gal/h 42 - 42 - 42 Water 42 938hg/h 42 - 42 - 42 Paracetamol 42 2352Kg/h 42 - 42 - 42 Heating duty 42 6137938KJ/h 42 - 42 - 42 Cooling duty 42 345181KJ/h 42 - 42 - 42 Acetic Anhydride 42 - 42 - 42 Nitrobenzene 42 - 42 - 42 Output from the evaporator is mainly paracetamol 43 Products 43 Quantity 43 Unit sale 43 Total 43 Paracetamol 43 2352Kg/h 43 - 43 Chapter 8: Conclusion and Recommendations 45 Appendices 47 Appendix I: Engineering unit conversion 47 Appendix II: Nomenclature 48 Appendix III: HAZOP minutes 48 (Attach minutes) 48 References 49 Chapter 1: Introduction