Thin Film & Short Path Evaporators

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Thin Film Evaporation

A thin film evaporator (TFE) or wiped film evaporator (WFE or “Wiffe”) provides short residence time and open, low pressure drop configuration, allowing continuous, reliable processing of many heat sensitive, viscous, or fouling materials without product degradation.

Simply put, they quickly separate volatile from less volatile components using indirect heat transfer and mechanical agitation of a flowing product film under controlled conditions. Either the vaporizable component (distillate) or the concentrated component may be the product.

Thin Film Evaporators
Evaporation Surface Area : 0.05m2 (DN60) – 1.5m2 (DN450) Maximum Temperature : + 200*C (Jacket)
Achievable Pressure : > 1mbar
Inner Diameter precision in the evaporation tube : +/- 0.02mm (DN60) to +/-0.8mm (DN45)
* Parts that come in contact with the fluid are made of borosilicate glass 3.3, PTFE, and SS316
Sealing : Magnetic Couplin

Short Path Evaporators

In a short path evaporator the condenser is located inside the evaporator body. Due to the different design details compared to Thin Film, short path evaporators can be used down to 0.001 mbar as compared with the conventional thin film evaporators which can be used down to approximately 1 mbar. Residence time in thin film and short path evaporators is only few seconds, which helps to avoid thermal decomposition of the product.

It is a thermal separation process for thermal sensitive products. Short residence time and low evaporation temperature will cause a minimum thermal stress to the distilled product. Typical applications are high molecular organic compounds particularly from the fields of chemistry, pharmaceutical and food industries. Distillation is one of the most important thermal separation methods.

Short path distillation is a continuous separation process working under vacuum conditions. Evaporation takes place from a heat wiped film. caused by the pressure drop between the place of vaporization and the vacuum system the operating pressure in typical wiped film evaporators with external condenser limits to some millibars.

Short Path Evaporators
Evaporation Surface Area : 0.05m2 (DN60) – 0.33m2 (DN150) Maximum Temperature : + 200*C (jacket)* *PTFE Wiper : +200*C, PBI Wiper : +300*C
Achievable Pressure : >0.001mbar
Inner Diameter precision in the evaporation tube : +/- 0.02mm (DN6) – +/-0.5mm (DN45)
Sealing : Magnetic Coupling