Evaporation & Crystallization Systems

Food ingredients and additives are used to preserve the flavor or enhance the taste or appearance of food, and to increase its nutritional content or stability.

Yeast evaporation

The production of bakery or other type of yeasts as food ingredients is a water intensive process. The waste water from this overall process can contain a high concentration of various salts, as well as dissolved and suspended organic components. GEA’s Falling film or forced circulation evaporators are used to concentrate the components in the yeast stillage. Which type of evaporator is used will depend on the required concentration ratio, the evaporation rate, the type of heating or heat recovery system, and the viscosity and fouling characteristics of the stillage. Falling film evaporators are typically used for low viscosities, of up to about 100 cP, and large evaporation rates. Forced circulation evaporators are used for higher concentration ranges, and can handle much higher viscosities, or fouling stillage.

Pectin

Pectin extract is obtained from lemon, or apple peel. The extract can be concentrated using GEA’s falling film evaporation plants that are heated by mechanical vapor recompressors. These systems feature energy-saving operation and compact design. Our falling film evaporators are also used for the treatment of resulting stillage,  and for these applications the falling film evaporator plants are directly heated with the vapors from the distillation (rectification) of the IPA alcohol that is used to precipitate the concentrated pectin extract.

GEA’s dedicated R&D center and pilot plants are focused on the development and evaluation of process innovations in a range of process fields, including evaporation technologies. We can work with each client to exploit our technological and process expertise to design the optimum evaporation system for each food ingredient product or production process.