Latest Evaled evaporators help pharma manufacturers save money on waste

Published: 13-Apr-2016

Evaporation using Veolia's Evaled PC evaporators is a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative

Veolia Water Technologies UK has broadened its range of Evaled evaporators to include models for smaller pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturing facilities that currently dispose of liquid waste offsite. The Evaled PC heat pump vacuum evaporators are said to reduce wastewater disposal costs and offer opportunities for recovering raw materials including APIs, disinfectants, proteins and glycols as well as recycling water.

Offsite disposal of waste containing APIs and similar ingredients is expensive, often involving incineration or complex chemical treatment.

Evaporation using Evaled PC evaporators is a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative that can reduce waste volume by up to 90% giving a significant cost saving, the firm says.

As Evaled PC evaporators operate under vacuum, water boils in the range of 30-40°C. The resulting low-temperature evaporation makes it possible to recover heat-sensitive materials from waste and, with a typical electrical consumption of only 0.15kWh per litre of distillate, the carbon footprint is small.

There are two technological options in the Evaled PC range: the PC F uses forced circulation for the highest distillate quality with minimum capital and operating costs for capacities up to 24,000 litres per day; the PC R, with capacities up to 2,000 litres per day, uses scraped film technology to achieve high concentrations, minimising the volume of waste for disposal, even with high viscosity or foaming waste.

Typical of the applications for evaporation is the recovery of a free base alkaloid API. The manufacturing facility treats the waste alkaloid solution in an Evaled PC R500 to produce 500 litres per day of aqueous condensate that can be discharged or recycled, and a concentrated stream containing the alkaloid that is then purified for recycling as a pharmaceutical grade API.

You may also like