ADVANCES IN EVAPORATION TECHNIQUES IN TOMATO PROCESSING

Increasing energy costs are driving energy-intensive industries, such as tomato paste production, to more energy-efficient solutions.
A case study of different evaporator arrangements has been done, in order to compare electrical and thermal energy costs for the production of tomato paste, both hot-break and cold-break, starting from 100 t/h of tomato juice.
Variation of evaporator performance as a function of inlet product temperature has been taken into consideration.
The configurations analyzed included: a multiple effect TASTE low-density evaporator coupled with a traditional forced circulation evaporator (FCE), two FCE (high-density and low-density) coupled together, and a single 4-effect FCE. The analysis highlighted that the use of TASTE as a pre-evaporator leads to substantial savings when compared to the solution including a FCE as a low-density evaporator.
TASTE is also more competitive than a 4-effect single FCE for hot-break production, while it becomes slightly less efficient than a single FCE when producing cold-break.

XI International Symposium on the Processing Tomato

M. Levati

TASTE evaporator, hot break, cold break, energy efficiency, falling film, steam economy, multiple effect

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.823.23