Madeta AS, a major private dairy company in the Czech Republic, has selected a turnkey evaporator from GEA Process Engineering to process sweet whey. Benefits of the evaporator are said to include good energy efficiency, low CO2 emissions, low water waste and a small footprint.
With an evaporative capacity of 12.5 tonnes/hour, the new plant limits the use of steam for heat treatment so it has very low energy consumption. The principle relies on the use of the Mechanical Vapour Recompression (MVR) technology. This allows a high concentration of whey to be achieved with nearly 500kg/h less steam than would have been used with a traditional design. This represents a reduction of nearly €80,000/year in running costs. Furthermore, the solution offers a high level of flexibility.
To respond to the client’s expectations to invest money where it is the most fruitful, GEA has also adopted a ‘combi’ design where the two aspects of the evaporator are included in one single body. The idea was to minimise the footprint and associated costs such as those for buildings and platforms. The result is an evaporator that requires very little space and leaves good access for maintenance or for installation of future equipment.
