Buss-SMS-Canzler GmbH

Thin Film Evaporation refers here to the thermal separation of products in a mechanically generated, thin and highly turbulent liquid film. After entering the Thin Film Evaporator, the product comes into contact with the rotor: it is uniformly spread on the periphery by the distribution ring, then picked up by the first rotor blades and immediately formed in to a film (0.5 - 3.5 mm) on the heat transfer surface. In front of each rotor blade, the fluid creates a bow wave. The fluid in the gap between the heat transfer surface and the rotor blade tip is highly turbulent and this leads to intensive heat and mass transfer rates. This turbulence produces high heat transfer coefficients even with highly viscous products. Due to the intensive mixing action within the bow wave, temperature sensitive products are prevented from over heating and fouling on the heat transfer surface can be reduced or eliminated.

Since their introduction more than 50 years ago by Luwa and Samesreuther, today Buss-SMS-Canzler, Thin Film Evaporators, which are also frequently called wiped film evaporators or agitated thin film evaporators have become a generally recognised and accepted solution for difficult and demanding process problems in the areas of distillation, concentration, degassing, drying and reactions.

Buss-SMS-Canzler offers the widest range of different types of Thin Film Evaporators available worldwide, such as:

• different types of rotor to suit a wide range of different applications
• vertical or horizontal construction
• cylindrical or conical design
• counter or co-current working principle

Thin Film Evaporators differ in the following main technical features from other evaporator types:

• Continuous and trouble-free processing of viscous, fouling and contaminated fluids by high turbulence in the liquid film, which also reduces the required temperature difference accross the heating surface;
• Gentle product treatment because of the short residence time and the narrow residence time spectrum in the whole equipment;
• High evaporation performance because of high surface heat flux;
• High evaporation ratio in a single pass;
• Minimum losses in case of product change because of the low hold-up.