Behavior analysis of an orange juice evaporator using an industrial process simulator

Resumo

The process simulators are increasingly used in the activities of design and analysis of industry operations. Recently, several commercial simulators have been developed, including HYSYS, which was initially developed for applications related to petrochemicals, but with modifications can be used to simulate the operating conditions of other areas such as the food industry. The evaporation of orange juice is a processing step that aims to concentrate the separation of water by heating the mixture, with high energy consumption. Therefore, processes modeling and simulation using simulators such as HYSYS becomes very attractive due to the possibility of studies in the plant without the need of experimentation, since the process being modeled it is possible to obtain fast and reliable information. The results of this study showed that hypothetical orange juice modeled in HYSYS through the sucrose solution in water represented well and the real juice obtaining a deviation less than 10% for the property thermal conductivity. The model of falling film evaporator for concentrating orange juice built in HYSYS by the association of the heat exchanger and flash separator vessel proved to be fairly consistent through the simulations with the experimental data of the process which indicates great potential for use as analysis tool, simulation and optimization of the concentration of orange juice in industrial evaporators.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14685/rebrapa.v2i1.43