Niro

Falling Film Evaporators for the Dairy Industry

Falling Film Evaporators for the Dairy Industry

In concentration of dairy products the Niro name is synonymous with efficient falling film evaporators, designed with special care to meet a wide variety of specifications and duties of the final products. Having installed hundreds of units worldwide during the last decade, Niro has acquired substantial experience and knowhow to comply with customer requirements. In the early 80-ies evaporator design mostly aimed at producing bulk dairy products by concentrating milk and milk by-products at highest energy efficiency and at lowest cost. Many of the functional properties of the products were often neglected. During the late 80-ies and 90-ies the industry came to the conclusion that the future lay in specialised production to meet customer specifications. Furthermore, it was accepted that not only energy, but also increased continuous running times without decrease in product quality, reduction of product losses, and CIP costs were essential elements to obtain savings. Niro took up the new challenge, knowing that many of the fundamental properties of a powder depend on the heating system of the evaporator. Today, modern evaporators for the dairy industry feature items such as, Adjustable and controllable direct contact heat treatment units. Shortest possible residence time. Special design to prevent bacteriological growth including thermophiles. Special design of liquid distribution systems to ensure correct tube coverage. Extended tube length. Efficient design of separators. Niro has developed leading technologies on basis of the Laguilharre concepts. The 21st century dairy evaporator can produce 2 concentrates to a wide variety of specifications and duties to suit further processing in the spray dryer or in other processes. This is achieved by stable operation during long uninterrupted runs without excessive fouling or product losses and with negligible bacteriological growth. All installations are designed to optimise energy consumption, functional specifications, and capacities as well as capital costs. Evaporators and ancillary equipment are manufactured in fabrication facilities all over the world. Installation, commissioning, and control systems are supervised by our technical- and process engineers.

Applications
Baby Food Buttermilk Coconut Milk Cream Hydrolysed Whey Hydrolysed Milk Milk Permeate Milk Protein Mixed Milk Products Skimmilk Whey Whey Permeate Whey Protein Wholemilk

Design Features
Niro dairy evaporators concentrate heatsensitive products using design concepts that make it possible to operate with low temperature differentials. The ability to utilise long tubes, and hence more heating surface per tube, ensures optimum tube coverage, reduced residence time, better thermal efficiency, long production runs, and short CIP times. The Niro evaporator is in a fully welded construction to meet sanitary standards. functional powder properties obtained in an adjacent spray dryer are influenced by the temperature/time conditions in the heat treatment system. Niro aims at obtaining functional properties of the final powder being the direct result of the applied heat treatment. The wanted powder properties must be defined already during the plant design phase. The bacteria killing results from the heat treatment required for the desired functional properties and combined with the new pre-heating system it is always superior to the results obtainable by any other system. Niro prefers this approach rather than to apply a heat treatment to obtain a certain pasteurisation/sterilisation without being able to choose the specific functional properties wanted. Direct contact systems ensure minimum heating time to reach a desired temperature. Holding tubes can be included in order to obtain certain final product properties. To save energy the direct contact system can be supplied with one or more direct contact regenerative systems using flash vapours to pre-heat the product before final heating. Some of the advantages of the direct contact system are, Shortest possible residence time for the heating phase. Possibility to provide optimum temperature/time combinations for specific product qualities. Possibility to achieve low heat product specifications at higher temperature. Temperature efficiency (better bacterial kill effect). Better heat stability in case of high heat stable powder. Better instant properties. Lower concentrate viscosity. Better coffee test stability in instant whole milk powders.

Pre-heating
Niro dairy evaporators are equipped with external straight-tube pre-heaters to achieve, Short residence time in controlled parallel flow. Optimum de-aeration of the calandrias. Accessibility for easy inspection of the heating surface. Recently, a new pre-heating system was developed eliminating surfaces to which thermophilic bacteria and their spores can adhere in a temperature zone allowing growth. Evaporators equipped with this system operate for 20 hours or more without development of vegetative thermophilic counts or thermophilic spore counts. Further decrease in counts depends on the heat treatment requirements of the process to follow.

Heat Treatment
As a standard feature Niro dairy evaporators are equipped with direct-contact heat treatment systems to meet the most stringent product specifications from the customers. Niro avoids using the common term pasteurisation. Experience proves that many 3

3-effect TVR Monotherm evaporator

Coo ling wa ter Air

Steam

TVR

Con den sat e

Flash regenerator Steam

Con cen tra te o ut t nle ct i u d Pro

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Liquid Distribution System

A static distribution ensures that all tubes in the calandrias receive equal amounts of liquid at all times, resulting in optimum tube wetting rates. The system can accept wide variations in liquid flow and flash vapour. The distribution system is the important key to long uninterrupted operation hours.

Two different standard designs can be selected, Stand-alone separator with tangential inand outlets, situated next to the calandria. Wrap-around separator, integrated in the lower part of the calandria. For smaller duties and TVR evaporators the stand-alone separator is the preferred choice, whereas for higher duties and MVR evaporators the wrap-around separator is best suited due to the compact design (see below).

Separator Design
Efficient liquid vapour separation is achieved by controlled vapour velocities through tangential flow vapour separators, designed for maximum separation efficiency at minimum pressure losses.

Compact Design
The free-standing design, in combination with longer tubes and wrap-around separators, reduces floor space requirements and building costs. This arrangement offers excellent opportunities for installation of new evaporators in existing buildings or capacity extensions of existing evaporators.

3-effect MVR/TVR evaporator

Co oli ng wa ter Air

Steam

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Flash regenerator Steam MVR

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Product Residence Time

The combination of pre-heating systems, direct-contact heating, and longer evaporator tubes reduces the number of product passes required for a given concentration, which again reduces the product residence time in the evaporator. Residence times as low as 6-10 minutes are now quite common, depending on capacity and turn-down requirements. The aim has been to try to achieve plug flow conditions in the evaporator to obtain the following, Minimum heat load on the product. High reactivity of the plant, eliminating the need of feed forward control. Very short mix phases at start-up and shut-down, eliminating the need of white water provisions. Limited product losses to waste water treatment. Reduced CIP liquid consumption. Reduced CIP time.

Cleaning-in-Place (CIP)
Cleaning costs are further minimised by dedicated and fully automated CIP systems. The systems are designed for low-cost caustic soda and nitric acid as cleaning agents.

Thermal Vapour Recompression (TVR)

In multiple effect TVR evaporators using high pressure steam, the heating medium in the first effect calandria is vapour from one of the associated effects, compressed to a higher temperature level by means of a steam ejector (TVR). The heating medium in any subsequent effect is the vapour generated in the previous calandria. Vapour from the final effect is condensed with incoming product, and if necessary supplemented by cooling water.

2-effect MVR/TVR Monotherm evaporator

Steam
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Flash regenerator Steam

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MVR

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Mechanical Vapour Recompression (MVR)

In MVR evaporators the heating medium in the first effect is vapour developed in the same or in one of the associated effects compressed to a higher temperature by one or several high pressure fans (MVR). Any excess vapour from the high heat section is condensed or may be utilised in an integrated high concentrator. The condensate is cooled by the feed product and can be used for the condenser or any external pre-cooling duties.

powder functionality, correct flow rate and concentration to the dryer for different products, no intermediate holding time. The features of the Niro evaporator make this possible for both MVR- and TVR designs. The choice between MVR and TVR and the number of effects (surface installed per ton of water evaporated) depends on various factors which may vary from site to site, Local prices of the different energy sources. Possibilities for utilisation of condensate. Depreciation of the capital cost involved (incl. building). Cleaning costs incl. product losses. Plants with low energy consumption require more surface, and apart from longer residence time for the product, more surface requires higher investment, higher cleaning cost, and, potentially, heavier product losses and increased heat damage to the concentrate. The right choice for each individual project must be based on a case study.

Equipment Selection
The most important consideration when designing an evaporator is to obtain the ability to produce a quality product during long uninterrupted running hours with a minimum of fouling and without bacteria increase. When an evaporator is directly connected to a spray dryer, other considerations are significant as well, i.e. 6

Condensate
Condensate quality is an important function of the separator performance and the product to be concentrated. Hot condensate can be used as boiler feed water, CIP liquid, or for pre-heating the drying air of an associated spray dryer. The condensate may also be additionally treated in an RO polisher as well as chemically to produce water of an exceptional quality. This is particularly important on locations with limited supplies of water or poor water quality.

Thermophilic vegetative cell count/g of total solid. Normal configuration. 1 hour 7 hours 14 hours 19 hours

Feed After PHE After preheat After 1 effect After 2

nd st

1,600 800 1,100 1,315 1,097 2,173 674 700

10,100 14,200 275,000 134,210 112,195 130,000 5,956 1,400

800 59,000 3,000,000 239,473 236,584 193,478 23,695 16,500

1,800 148,000 3,000,000 650,000 636,585 523,913 306,521 258,000

effect

After 3rd effect Concentrate Powder

Process Control and Instrumentation

Evaporators are suited for a completely automated control procedure, meeting the requirements for safe, informative, and flexible operation. Our systems feature, Automatic plant start-up, shut-down, and CIP cleaning procedures. Individual control level for each activator, e.g. motor, valve. Recipe system with access control and real time trends. Historical trends with hard copy print-out. Reporting on printer or to file for spread sheet use. Event/alarm logging. Dynamic on-screen sequence description in plain text. Standard tuning of control functions. Advanced control system.

Thermophilic vegetative cell count/g of total solid. Skim milk. Low thermophile configuration. 10 hours 12 hours 14 hours 16 hours 18 hours 20 hours

Feed After PHE After preheat Before 1 effect After 1 effect After 2
nd st st

5,400 8,500 7,800 500 789 1,400 1,300 1,250

2,700 2,400 2,300 500 1,500 2,214 2,000 2,350

1,700 1,600 700 1,100 289 380 2,826 1,200

37,000 6,100 5,200 1,100 289 1,007 740 1,200

38,000 13,200 6,000 1,900 2,500 714 1,956 1,100

10,200 13,200 7,600 1,200 4,474 714 1,220 1,200

effect

Concentrate Powder

Thermophilic aerobic spores count/g of total solid. Skim milk. Heat treatment 90C / 30 seconds. Low thermophile configuration. 10 hours 12 hours 14 hours 16 hours 18 hours 20 hours

Feed After PHE Before 1 effect After 1 effect Concentrate

st st

800 500 400 421 217

400 500 700 315 174

300 200 500 526 652

900 1,000 500 158 347

500 200 700 289 521

1,000 400 1,100 240 196

Niro France S.A.S.

Niro France S.A.S 4 rue J.P. Timbaud B.P. 80 Montigny le Bretonneux F 78185 St Quentin en Yvelines France Tel +33 1 30 14 61 10 Fax:+33 1 30 07 06 62 E-mail niro@niro.fr Niro A/S Gladsaxevej 305 PO Box 45 DK-2860 Soeborg Denmark Tel +45 39 54 54 54 Fax +45 39 54 58 00 E-mail: niro@niro.dk Web-site: www.niro.dk

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Printed in Denmark by Anton M Jensen