Caloris and Seitz Stainless offer on-site field support to address everyday processing challenges at food, beverage and dairy plants across North America.
If you have noticed a loss of efficiency in your evaporation system, there are a number of possible causes. A thorough assessment of the unit should reveal what the problem is.
Recently, a Caloris customer approached us with a desire to fix an efficiency issue with their MVR evaporator. They also asked about expanding capacity. The evaporator was produced and installed by another manufacturer four years before.
(article continues below)
Meet The Engineer
We sent a team to site to assess the situation. They noticed that the evaporator turbofan had to run at full-speed in order to achieve the desired evaporation rate. But the unit could only maintain that speed for 7-8 hours before requiring CIP. Operators needed to babysit the unit to make controls adjustments and keep the operation steady.
Our process engineer recommended alterations to the unit to correct some inherent design flaws. These changes would allow the evaporator to operate at a lower speed and lower energy consumption. He also recommended pressure taps to identify any vapor flow restrictions. This is a feature that Caloris includes on all new evaporator installations as they are helpful with future troubleshooting, instrument calibration, etc.
The above fixes are estimated to result in at least a 10% capacity increase for the unit.
While investigating the above, our team also noticed that product was overflowing from pass to pass. This can cause a number of issues including decreased efficiency, heat transfer issues and operational problems.
Caloris has designed an alteration to the unit that will prevent the product from overflowing. A field crew from Caloris subsidiary Seitz Stainless will perform this alteration and make the changes earlier suggested by the process engineer.
Finally, the crew will alter the evaporation system to add another pass, which will in turn help achieve additional increased capacity. All of the changes will be implemented over two planned 24-hour shutdowns this Fall.
Contact Caloris if you would like us to investigate and address processing deficiencies in your facility. Call us at 410-822-6900 or problem.solved@caloris.com to arrange a process assessment at your facility.
