Trial units facilitate correct evaporator choice

Evaporation is a widely used industrial process. From the concentration of food products to waste treatment and sludge management, evaporators are employed for several processes across many different industries. Accordingly, several different technologies, including heat exchangers, are employed across a wide range of industries.

As a result, it is not always easy to determine which options are the most suitable for a particular process, or even if a certain type of evaporator is feasible for a particular industrial process.

HRS Heat Exchangers strives to solve this problem by offering both laboratory and factory-scale analysis and pilot trial systems to facilitate the correct selection and application of evaporation equipment and systems.

HRS can provide laboratory-scale evaporation trials to analyse product behaviour and composition.

In-house lab testing

Located in Melbourne, HRS’s in-house laboratory-scale evaporation plant comprises a Rotavap evaporator, cooling water unit, pressure controller and a vacuum unit.

This equipment allows the company to determine whether an industrial evaporation process is feasible by testing a number of factors.

This includes the concentration level of product that can be achieved, how the product behaves during concentration (and in particular its physical properties and any fouling behaviour) and the physical properties of the evaporated water.

Using this information, it is then possible to design appropriate evaporation systems, including potential Zero Liquid Discharge treatment systems.

Any products of evaporated water can be tested for any parameter, either in-house or using external laboratories where necessary. Laboratory evaporation tests can be carried out at any pressure between atmospheric and low vacuum.

HRS skid-mounted portable pilot evaporation plants onsite at a client for evaporation trials.

Evaporation pilot plants

Having determined that evaporation is suitable for the product in question, the next stage consists of conducting larger trials of the process on the appropriate products.

HRS operates a trial evaporation plant at its Spanish manufacturing site in Murcia. This allows the company to take samples of product from customers and test them, without the need to install equipment onsite.

HRS has several mobile pilot evaporation plants that can be installed at user’s sites.

These are located around the globe for when intensive or long-term testing is required, or where the evaporation process may be applied across a number of products or lines. Each unit contains all the necessary equipment to simulate a single-stage evaporation process.

The pilot plants are equipped with all the instrumentation needed to assess all process parameters and includes a control panel complete with a human-machine Interface (HMI) for automatic operation. The evaporation plants are transportable, skid-mounted and easily set up for onsite trials.