VARIABLE FLOW RATE’s

The effect of flow rate on a single effect evaporators capacity, economy, percentage of
feed vaporized and effluent composition

Huon Croll
Z-5419805
1 ABSTRACT
This experiment aims to study the effect of the feed flow rate of a mixture of 0.1M sodium chloride
solution in water on a single effect evaporators capacity, economy, percentage of feed evaporated,
and effluent concentration. Single effect evaporators are devices which only use the direct
application of heat to a feed to vaporize a fraction of said feed to separate the feed into two
different phases through phase creation, this mechanism providing utility to many commercial and
industrial applications and hence justifying its study. This experiment was conducted through taking
measurements of conductivity, temperature and volume of distillate produced at regularly set
intervals to calculate the variables in the stated aim of this experiment. These results were to a
extent compared against theoretical results obtained from peer reviewed literature as a theoretical
framework through which to understand and contextualize said results. As a result of heavy
systematic error, the most notable being the measurement of the condensate as the condensate
and the distillate, most of the results were found to be unmeaningful with heavy deviation form
literature and more a reflection of errors in the experiment itself rather than any indication of the
nature of the calculated variables.

2 BACKGROUND
Evaporator describes a process unit that uses the different boiling point of given chemical species to
alter the composition of a mixture through the removal of the more volatile species by phase
separation via boiling to concentrate or otherwise separate the mixture fraction with the higher
boiling point. This process produces two streams, being the feed that is evaporated which may then
be condensed and hence termed the distillate, and the feed that passed through the evaporator but
didn’t evaporate, hence having a greater concentrate of solutes due to reduced volume, this being
named the concentrate. Evaporators provides utility as an extraction method to many commercial
and operational uses such as in the food industry for production of concentrates, primary industries
such as commercial salt production or the production of lithium, an essential component of the
batteries found in many everyday devices [1]. While there exists multi effect evaporators that use
the heat from previous product streams to heat next sequential evaporators at low pressures, the
focus of this study will be on a single effect evaporator, which operates on the principle that the
applied heat to the evaporator raises the temperature to increase the vapor pressure of the mixture.

There exist many measures of a evaporators effectiveness being economy, capacity, and percentage
of feed evaporated. Economy is essentially a measure of what percentage of the heat input is used in
the vaporisation of the liquid within the evaporator, capacity is a measure of how much liquid can a
evaporator produce over a given time period, and percentage of feed evaporated is a measure of
what fraction of a given unit of feed will be vaporized.

3 AIM
This experiment’s purpose was to observe the effect of the feed flow rate of a mixture of 0.1M
sodium chloride solution in water on measures of the evaporators function such as capacity,
economy, percentage of feed evaporated, and effluent concentration in a single effect evaporator.

4 METHODOLOGY
The experiment was conducted in the SOLTEQ model BP70 double effect evaporator, a diagram of its
operation being available in figure 5 in the appendix, consisted of changing the power of the pump
to a given percentage of the total power (5,25,25%), during which several measurements would be
made being conductivity, temperature, and condensate volume. Conductivity would be measured in
the feed of the evaporator column and the outlet of the cyclone so that salt concentration the feed
and of the effluent can be determined. These measurements being made through in built system
measurement instrumentations QT01 and QT02 being feed conductivity and cyclone outlet
conductivity respectively. Temperature was measured in the feed for the evaporator so that the
extra heat required to bring this water to boiling point could be known and was done through inbuilt
system measurement instrumentations TIC01, finally condensate volume would be measured so that
the mass of steam produced could be known and was done through taking the volume of fluid from
condensate tank B2 and concentrate tank B3. Measurements from inbuilt instrumentation was
conducted constantly throughout the experiment at 10 second intervals and condensate was
measured at the end of each run that lasted approximately 20 minutes with an error of +-0.05 min.

5 RESULTS
5.1 CAPACITY
Capacity was calculated via the following equation

Volume of condensate
Capacity=
time
Equation 1: Calculation of capacity

At varying flow rates the following results seen in figure 1 were yielded

Capacity (L/min)
0.12

0.1
R² = 0.999694002447981
0.08
Capacity (L/min)

0.06

0.04

0.02

0
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Pump flow rate as percentage of total power

Figure 1, capacity (y axis) to flow rate (x axis)

Following a highly linear relationship between the production of condensate and the flow of feed,
this is partly a result of the way in which the condensate is measured in which condensate and
effluent are both measured as purely condensate, this essentially measuring the feed as the
condensate and hence explaining why a R value of 0.9997 is found for a this linear relationship. This
error will be elaborated on greater in the discussion,

5.2 ECONOMY
The economy of a single effect evaporator is calculated via equation 2 displayed below
 m
Economy=
me
Equation 2, calculation of single effect evaporator economy: me stands for mass equivalent steam, m stands for mass of
condensate.

With mass equivalent steam being calculated through equation 3

m∗( C p∗∆ T + λ)
me =
λ
Equation 3, calculation of me: m stands for mass of condensate, Cp represents the heat capacity coefficient, ∆ T represents
the total change in temperature of the mass, and λ represents the latent heat value for the transition of water (in this scenario)
into vaporous phase.

Due to the low range in temperatures Cp can be assumed to be constant with the value of 4.2kj/kg*C
as stated by SOLTEQ BP 70 manual [2], λ being 2280kj/kg selected from SOLTEQ BP 70 manual [2].

Under the variable flow rates of the experiment the following economy values were generated, as
displayed in Figure 2

Economy
99.9830%
99.9820%
99.9810%
99.9800%
Economy %

99.9790%
99.9780%
99.9770%
99.9760%
99.9750%
99.9740%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Pump power (% of total avaliable)

Figure 2, Economy as a percentage (Y axis) against pump power (%) as a measure of flow rate (x axis)

These results being so high due to the small amount of required heat relative to the high amount of
latent heat required per kg. This deviates significantly from expected values as seen in literature [3]
and [4], this will be elaborated on in the discussion.

5.3 PERCENTAGE OF FEED EVAPORATED

m
%feed evaporated=
mf
Equation 4, the percentage of feed evaporated: m stands for mass of condensate generated, mf stands for the mass of the feed
put in.

The results generated by this equation for each respective flow rate is displayed in figure 3 below.
 Percentage of feed evaporated
120.00%

100.00%
Feed evaporated (%)

80.00%

60.00%

40.00%

20.00%

0.00%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Pump power (%)

Figure 3, percentage of feed evaporated, feed evaporated as percentage (y axis) against Pump power (x axis)

This is again influenced by the method through which the condensate was measured, with feed
being measured instead of condensate therefore this acts again as more of a calculation of what
percentage of the feed is getting caught in the equipment than an accurate measurement of what
percentage of feed is being evaporated.

5.4 EFFLUENT CONCENTRATION

Effluent concentration against time

0.01
Effluent concentration (M)

0.008

0.006

0.004

0.002

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600

Time (seconds)

5 flow rate 15 flow rate 25 flow rate

Figure 4, Effluent concentration against time, Effluent concentration in moles/litre (y axis) against time in second (x axis)

This goes against the expected value of greater than 0.1M as it is known that a percentage of the
feed will be turned into vapor and sent to the condensate tank, given that concentration is found
through equation 5, a decrease in volume of water should be positively correlated to a higher
concentration.

m
C=
V
Equation 5, describing calculation of concentration in moles/L: C represents concentration in moles/L, m represents the
amount of moles of solute, and V represents the litres of solvent.

Hence this is indicative of systematic error in the conduction of the experiment, this will be
elaborated on in the discussion.

6 DISCUSSION
The results of this experiment are heavily influenced through numerous systematic errors in the
conduction of this experiment resulting in some results measuring a totally different variable to what
was intended, with no alternatives in calculations within the scope of this study that can act to
counter this error in result to achieve a acceptable level of accuracy for the originally intended
variable calculation.

The most jarring of these errors is in the methodology in which the concentrate and condensate are
taken into the same measuring cylinder and stated to be condensate. This is essentially measuring
feed as once a given quantity of water is passed through the system, assuming that none of this feed
is leaked into the environment or adhered to parts of the equipment, then it will either evaporate or
not evaporate hence becoming respectively distillate or concentrate. This relationship between feed
and these two measures being described in equation 6.

mf =md +mc
Equation 6, concentration of feed mass: where m represents mass, subscript f represents feed, subscript d represents
distillate, and subscript c represents concentrate.

This error in methodology means that the equation calculating capacity of evaporator is actually
calculating flow rate going through evaporator, and that the percentage of feed evaporated should
be always be numerically 1 given the assumptions of equation 6 is correct, so instead feed
evaporated calculated is essentially measuring to what extent this assumption isn’t true hence what
percentage of feed is lost to environment or to the machinery.

The high economy obtained, being greater than 99% is caused by a calculation error. Economy
serves as a measure of how much of the energy being input into the system is being transformed
into directly vaporizing water, this being described by equation 7 which can be rearranged to
equation 8

m∗λ
Economy=
q
( )
λ
Equation 8, different calculation of economy: m represents mass of condensate, λ represents the latent heat of water, q
represents the heat transferred from the oil.

Hence to what extent the system acts to be ideal, and the amount of energy transferred is going
directly to overcoming latent heat rather than heating up liquid or other forms of energy sinks will
determine the extent to which the economy calculation will deviate from 100%. The theoretical
prediction described in equation 3, describes the amount of energy transferred to the system based
on how much condensate was collected, however how much is collected being a real scenario
already accounts for all the effects of heat loss meaning that the calculation of economy is only
accounting for how much heat needs to be transferred to the fluid to heat it up to boiling point.
Given the insignificance of this value due to the water being always above 97C and typically at or
around 100C meaning delta T is minimized, and the high energy of latent heat of 2800kj/kg [[fact
check that]], economy exists at always around 100% for each trial with the dependence of flow rate
having a weak relation to how hot the feed is. The calculation of economy could be improved if a
more accurate theoretical prediction could be obtained such as described by equation 8

q=UA Δ T
Equation 8, heat transfer equation: U is the heat transfer coefficient, A is the area of heat transfer, ΔT is the difference in
temperature between the two selected points.

While A and Δ T are known values, U is not and there exists no way of knowing the value of U either
within the scope of this experiment.

Effluent concentration presents another error in the results as already discussed in the results to an
extent. This error is significant and at no point does it exceed 0.1M as would be expected, the only
reasonable reason for this could be instrumentation error, with other possible reasons such as the
loss of salt due to crystallization along piping posing not a significant enough error to explain the
obtained results with observed volumes of water relative to the known concentration of salt for
crystallisation ( reference and stat), no wrong configuration of valves could be obtained so that the
water that passes through the evaporator does not pass the effluent hence there exists no possible
issue in the methodology. Hence instrumentation error in either the feed conductivity meter (QT01)
that was used as a baseline for 0.1M or the effluent conductivity meter (QT02) poses to be the most
likely explanations for error in the results in the effluent composition. Due to this no meaningful
analysis could also be made of the effluent in regard to the effect of flow rate on it.

Due to these reasons no meaningful correlations between flow rate and capacity, economy,
percentage of feed evaporated. Previous literature suggest a positive correlation with capacity and
flow rate, a neutral correlation with economy, and a negative correlation with percentage of feed
evaporated meaning that higher flow rates correlate with reduced effluent concentrations [4], [5].

7 CONCLUSION
While there exists significant literature regarding the expected trends of this experiment, none of
these were observed in the data analysis as a result of numerous systematic errors that either
completely invalidate or deviate to a point of dubious utility the data gathered. For these reasons
this study was unable to make any significant analysis or observations with regards to its stated aim,
however lessons with how to improve the conduction of this experiment for next time have been
gained from the conduction of this study, such as to measure condensate and concentrate
separately.

8 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[ J. M. S. Z. &. G. Fei Meng, “Review of Lithium Production and Recovery from Minerals, Brines, and
1 Lithium-Ion Batteries,” Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review , vol. 42, no. 2, pp.
] 123-141, 2019.

[ SOLTEQ, “SOLTEQ® DOUBLE EFFECT EVAPORATOR (Model: BP 70) Manual,” N/A N/A N/A. [Online].
2 Available: https://unsw.sharepoint.com/sites/ChemEngTeaching/Shared%20Documents/Forms/
] AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FChemEngTeaching%2FShared%20Documents
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%20Documents%2FCEIC2007&p=true&ga=1. [Accessed 20 11 2023].

[ P. BRYAN W. HACKETT, “The Essentials of Continuous Evaporation,” N/A May 2018. [Online].
3 Available: https://www.aiche.org/resources/publications/cep/2018/may/essentials-continuous-
] evaporation#:~:text=Thus%2C%20the%20steam%20economy%20will,%2Fkg%20steam%20(4)..
[Accessed 20 11 2023].

[ H. E.-D. H. E. Faisal Al-Juwayhel, “Analysis of single-effect evaporator desalination systems

[ C. Balaji, B. Srinivasan and S. Gedupudi, “Heat exchangers,” in Heat Transfer Engineering, N/A,
5 Elsevier Science, 2020, pp. 199-231.
]
9 APPENDIX

Figure 5, Process Flow diagram of SOLTEQ model BP70 double effect evaporator, the evaporator in use for the conduction
of this experiment.