Centritherm® evaporator
Retain your product’s functional properties - Naturally
Flavourtech’s Centritherm® evaporator is the ideal technology for producing high quality concentrates of products that are heat sensitive, viscous or of particularly high value.
With a residence time on the heating surface of only one second, and using evaporation temperatures as low as 35oC, the Centritherm® evaporator has minimal to no effect on colour and active constituents. This ensures that active ingredients are protected leading to higher yields of their valuable properties. The low temperatures used also ensure that no heat derived flavours are produced to alter the original flavour of your products.
Clever in design, the Centritherm® evaporator is much more compact than competing evaporators and can be installed quickly with minimal infrastructure requirements. A simple operator interface makes it easy to use and a built-in cleaning system means changeover from one product to the next is quick and easy.
Furthermore, its centrifugal design means it can reach higher concentrations than other evaporators and it is often used as a finisher in the evaporation process to reduce process and energy requirements downstream.
Applications of the Centritherm® evaporator include:
- High quality tea and coffee concentrates
- High quality fruit and vegetable concentrates
- Solvent removal from botanicals and oleoresins
- Solvent removal in the pharmaceutical industry
- Concentration of vitamins, enzymes and active ingredients
Benefits
Low thermal impact
The Centritherm® evaporator has minimal thermal impact compared to other types of evaporator due to its short residence time and low operating temperatures. Using centrifugal force, the product is in contact with the heating surface for a mere one second―a substantially shorter time than in other evaporation systems, which may take several minutes. Also, as the Centritherm evaporator operates under vacuum, it reduces the product’s boiling point such that evaporation can take place at lower temperatures.
Minimal product losses
As a result of the extremely short residence time and thin product film on the heating surface, the volume of product present in the Centritherm® evaporator at any given instant is negligible. This low hold-up volume makes the Centritherm evaporator ideal for processing small batches of high value products, or for processing multiple products. For example, even in the largest model Centritherm, the CT12, which has an evaporative capacity of 4,800kg/h, the hold-up volume is only 7 litres. This is considerably less than other evaporators that may have greater than 100 litres of hold-up volume.
Other benefits include:
- The ability to achieve high concentrations in a single pass due to the centrifugal forces that are experienced by the product on the spinning cone
- The ability to handle more viscous products than other evaporators (up to 20,000cP)
- Hygienic system design
- The flexibility to fit an integrated pre-evaporator stage to increase the concentration of extract and reduce energy consumption while still being delicate on the product (applicable for the CT9 and CT12 models)
Case Study
Dabur India Ltd.
Dabur India Ltd is one of India’s leading FMCG Companies. Building on a legacy of quality and experience of over 125 years, Dabur is today India’s most trusted name and also the world’s largest Ayurvedic and Natural Health Care Company. Dabur operates in key consumer product categories like Hair Care, Oral Care, Health Care, Skin Care, Home Care and Foods. The company has a wide distribution network, covering over 2.8 million retail outlets and their products are today available in over 60 countries.
What sets Dabur apart from the crowd is its ability to change ahead of others and to always set new standards in product quality and innovation. Assisting Dabur in achieving the highest product quality possible is their use of the Centritherm evaporator that, due to its low thermal impact, is utilised in the concentration of high quality food and health care products. The Centritherm evaporator has had a huge impact on Dabur’s business allowing them to become market leaders in specific products due to the enhanced product quality that the Centritherm evaporator leads to. This in turn has led to increased production volumes and the establishment of new factories to meet consumer demand for these specialised high quality products. In summary, the installation of multiple Centritherm evaporator units has contributed to Dabur's success in this competitive market.
How it works
The Centritherm® evaporator is a single-effect, centrifugal evaporator that operates under vacuum and uses steam as the heating medium. The heating surface is the underside of hollow, rotating cones that can be stacked vertically to increase the evaporative capacity for each model.
The product to be concentrated enters the evaporator through a feed tube and injection nozzles (one for each cone) distribute the product to the heating surface of each cone. Centrifugal force instantaneously spreads the product over the entire heating surface in an extremely thin layer (approximately 0.1 mm). The product passes across the heating surface in less than one second.
The concentrated product collects at the outer edge of the cones and then exits the evaporator through the stationary paring tube using the centrifugal force that is being generated by the cones.
Product vapour removed from the extract rises through the centre of the cone stack and is discharged to an external condenser.
Steam is supplied to the evaporator and fills the steam chamber. The flooded steam chamber then allows the steam to enter inside each hollow cone through the ports around the ring base of the cone.
As the steam condenses, it is immediately dispersed to the upper wall of the hollow steam chamber. The steam condensate then exits the steam chamber through a channel and is removed from the evaporator via a paring tube again using the centrifugal force being generated by the spinning cone.
The Centritherm® is easy to operate, service-friendly and hygienic, including built-in Clean In Place (CIP) functionality.
