A Caloris dairy customer requested a review of their evaporator in preparation for planned maintenance of the turbofan and the evaporator, which feeds a spray dryer.
When our engineer arrived on-site, the evaporator was down due to unrelated issues at the plant. This was an opportune time to inspect the unit while it was idle. Over the ensuing days, he was able to observe the evaporator on water and on product.
The evaporator was running well. Our engineer checked for vacuum leaks, the health of the turbofan, pump seals and seal water, pre-distributor alignment and more. This thorough inspection revealed multiple typical maintenance issues that were easily resolved to provide incremental operational and performance improvement.
Meet The Engineer
On the operations side, our engineer noted that plant staff were running the unit very conservatively in order to avoid any potential issues on their respective shifts. This overloaded the spray dryer and therefore reduced the plant’s powder production capacity.
In addition, the evaporator was “outrunning” the dryer. When the dryer feed tank filled up, the operators were recycling the evaporator discharge back through the evaporator feed balance tank, which caused major disturbances to outlet solids, ultimately reinforcing the desire to run the unit conservatively.
Our engineer strongly advocated for producing and enforcing standard operating procedures so that the evaporator would run at its designed capacity in conjunction with matching its output rate with what the dryer could handle. This will greatly improve efficiency, stability and overall production capacity of the entire operation.
Need Help Defining Your Standard Operating Procedures?
Caloris can help streamline your process and develop standard operating procedures for optimal results on your processing line. Contact Caloris at 410-822-6900 or problem.solved@caloris.com to arrange a process assessment at your facility.
