Effect of Circulation Flowrate on the Performance of a Spiral Finned Freeze Concentrator

Abstract

Progressive freeze concentration (PFC) has emerged as a viable technology for concentration of liquid solution. In this study, a newly designed spiral finned crystallizer to improve productivity of PFC process was proposed. The spiral fin is presented based on the advantage of additional surface area to the spiral finned crystallizer. The performance of spiral finned crystallizer was analysed by the system efficiency and the effect of circulation flowrate. It was found that the efficiency of the system has significantly improved in terms of a lower effective partition constant and a higher recovered solute. An effective partition constant of 0.35 and a recovered solute of approximately 0.96 g of glucose per 1 g of initial glucose were obtained. Thus, spiral finned crystallizer for PFC system is evidently an effective system to concentrate solution and to produce pure ice crystal.