ABSTRACTFour process alternatives to the standard steam driven triple effect scraped surface evaporators are compared on a present value economic basis. Use of mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) evaporators, reverse osmosis (RO), and centrifugal separation of tomato fiber and serum are compared in different combinations. The lowest cost system was found to utilize centrifugation, RO, MVR and heat recovery with a total energy use of 88.7 Kcal/kg (160 Btu/1b) of tomato concentrate as compared to the conventional system requiring over 1110 Kcal/kg (2000 Btu/1b) concentrate. The viscosity of the recombined solids‐serum concentrate after a heat treatment was found to be 80 of the conventional concentrate. Mathematical models of the unit operations are developed and coupled with capital costs and energy costs for the unit operations to give present value system cost
展开▼
