An improved understanding of the operation of falling-film evaporators in cane sugar factories

Falling-film evaporators (FFE) have been adopted as a standard feature for juice evaporation in beet sugar factories for decades. In recent years, cane sugar factories have accepted FFE as an alternative technology for the juice evaporation station. Operational experience and exclusive investigations in recent years on the use of falling-film evaporators in the cane sugar industry clearly show the advantages for sustainable sugar production. Recent findings regarding heat-transfer coefficients k of individual FFEs, the effect of scale deposition on the k of first-effect FFE, reduction in exhaust steam demand and lower sucrose losses for evaporator stations comprising entirely of falling-film type evaporators are summarised and discussed.