Re: Solid Handling
If it is a high vacuum duty, I guess a rotary valve will be impractical as it will have too high a leakage rate.
A "Lock Hopper" arrangement may be your best bet. A hopper below the evaporator with a valve above and below. If necessary you can pull a vac in the hopper before opening the upper valve to avoid upsetting the process conditions in the evaporator.
With many of the materials I have seen handled from evaporators, there are a couple of issues with that which may or may not appply in your case:
1) if your material is abrasive, valve wear and increased leakage rate across the valve over time may be an issue.
2) The material discharging from an evaporator is often not dry and free flowing, it may need some "discharge aid" to get it to flow into and from the lock hopper. ■
Solid Handling
We are in the Field of Manufacturing Chemicals.
In one of the our process We are separating solids from Chemical using Thin Film Evaporator.
Evaporator works under high vacuum, due to which we have to collect soild continiously in Intermidiate vessel.
After 24 Hrs We stop the plant & remove solids from Intermidiate tank.
Some times liquid also comes along with Solid.
We use water to discharge solid from Intermidiate tank.
Does any body have solution so that solid can be discharge conitiously under vacuum by which we can run our plant continiously.
Thanks & Regards,
ramrap.r@gmail.com ■