Mathematical Development For Scaling-up Of Molecular Distillators: Strategy And Test With Recovering Carotenoids From Palm Oil

Studies for recovering carotenoids from palm oil were developed in the Separation Process Development Laboratory (LDPS-FEQ-UNICAMP) through molecular distillation process (modeling, simulation and experiments) (Batistella and Maciel, 1998; Batistella et al., 2002). All the studies, however, have involved laboratory scale distillators, but due to the success of the developments, a lot of industrial applications are becoming possible. So, aiming to design molecular distillators with industrial dimensions, it is important to develop a methodology looking for an easy and fast form for scaling-up, which is the aim of this work. The procedure makes use of the knowledge obtained from the simulation and operational strategy developed for small scale equipment. Moreover, the nonideality condition of the vaplor phase was considered on the developments of the scale-up (Batistella et al., 2000), since this an important macrobehaviour to be considered. The obtained results show that the developed methodology is robust. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.21C11131118Batistella, C.B., Moraes, E.B., Wolf Maciel, M.R., Experimental and Simulated Elimination Curves for recovering Carotenoids From Vegetal Oil Through Molecular Distillation Process (2003) Chemical Engineering Transactions, 3, pp. 569-574Batistella, C.B., Moraes, E.B., Wolf-Maciel, M.R., Maciel Filho, R., Molecular distillation Process for Recovering Biodiesel and Carotenoids from Palm Oil (2002) Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, 98, pp. 1149-1159Batistella, C.B., Wolf-Maciel, M.R., Maciel Filho, R., Rigorous modeling and simulation of molecular distillators: development of a simulator under conditions of non ideality of the vapor phase (2000) Computers and Chemical Engineering, 24, pp. 1309-1315Batistella, C.B., Moraes, E.B., Wolf-Maciel, M.B., Maciel Filho, R., Strategy and Mathematical Development for Scale-up of Molecular Distillators for Recovering Carotenoids from Palm Oil (2000) Computer-Aided Chemical Engineering, 8, pp. 505-510Batistella, C.B., Maciel, M.R.W., Recovery of Carotenoids from Palm Oil by Molecular Distillation (1998) Computers & Chemical Engineering, 22, pp. S53-S60Batistella, C.B., Maciel, M.R.W., Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Molecular Distillators: Centrifugal and Falling Film (1996) Computers, Chemical Engineering, 20 (SUPPL), pp. S19-S24Bhandarkar, M., Ferron, J.R., Transport Process in Thin Liquid Films during High-Vacuum Distillation (1988) Ind. Eng. Chem. Soc., 27, pp. 1016-1024Batistella, C.B., Modelagem e simulação de destiladores moleculares de filme descendente e centrifugo (1996) Master Thesis-UNICAMP, Campinas-SP-BrazilBird, G.A., Direct Simulatioin and the Boltzmann Equation (1970) The Physics of Fluids, 13, pp. 2676-2681Borgnakke, C., Larsen, P.S., Statistical Collision Model for Monte Carlo Simulation of Polyatomic Gas Mixture (1975) J. Comput. Phys., 18, pp. 405-420Ferron, J.R., Evaporation and Condensation of Mixture under Rarefield Conditions (1986) Ind. Eng. Che. Fund., 25, pp. 594-602Langmuir, I., The vapor pressure of metallic tungsten (1913) Phys. Rev. Ser., 2 (2), pp. 329-34