Evaporators help save money on waste

The EVALED PC series of heat pump vacuum evaporators is said to reduce wastewater disposal costs and to offer opportunities for recovering raw materials including APIs, disinfectants, proteins and glycols as well as recycling water.

Offsite disposal of wastes containing APIs and similar ingredients is expensive, often involving incineration or complex chemical treatment. Evaporation using EVALED PC evaporators is a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative that can reduce the waste volume by up to 90% giving a significant cost saving. 

As EVALED PC evaporators operate under vacuum, water boils in the range of 30-40°C. The resulting low temperature evaporation means that it is possible to recover heat sensitive materials from wastes and, with a typical electrical consumption of only 0.15kWh/L of distillate, the carbon footprint is small. The EVALED PC range is available in two technological options. The PC F Series uses forced circulation for the highest distillate quality with minimum capital and operating costs for capacities up to 24,000L/day. The PC R Series, with capacities up to 2000L/day, uses scraped film technology to achieve high concentrations, minimising the volume of waste for disposal, even with high viscosity or foaming wastes.

Typical of the applications for evaporation is the recovery of a free base alkaloid API. The manufacturing facility treats the waste alkaloid solution in an EVALED PC R500 to produce 500L/day of aqueous condensate that can be discharged or recycled, and a concentrated stream containing the alkaloid that is then purified for recycling as a pharmaceutical grade API.