CHAPTER

TWO
INTRODUCTION TO THE
DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF
EVAPORATOR SYSTEMS

Evaporation, one of the oldest of the unit operation processes, is commonly used to
separate a nonvolatile solute from a volatile solvent. Since energy is transferred
in an evaporator from a condensing vapor to a boiling liquid, evaporation may
be regarded as a special case of the unit operation called heat transfer. On the
other hand, evaporation may be regarded as a special case of the unit operation
called distillation because a solvent is separated from a solute by virtue of the
differences in their vapor pressures.
First the fundamental principles of evaporation are reviewed in Sec. 2-1.
Then the equations required to describe an evaporator system at unsteady state
operation are developed in Sec. 2-2. In Sec. 2-3, the two-point form of the
implicit method is used to solve a numerical problem involving a single-effect
evaporator. Numerical techniques such as Broyden's method and scaling pro-
cedures are also presented in Sec. 2-3.

2-1 FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF EVAPORATION

Evaporators are commonly used for the special separation process wherein a
volatile solvent is separated from a nonvolatile solute. Evaporators are com-
monly found in the inorganic, organic, paper, and sugar industries. Typical
applications include the concentration of sodium hydroxide, brine, organic col-
loids, and fruit juices. Generally, the solvent is water.