Flash evaporation intensified by microwave energy and performance analysis

A novel microwave flash evaporation ( MFE) system is presented in this paper for the first time, which is expected to solve the inherent problems of conventional flash evaporation (CFE) system, such as high energy consumption. scaling, and long stages etc. In order to demonstrate the performance of such a novel system, some single factor experiments have been carried out by using water as experimental material, and the influence of parameters such as microwave power, initial temperature, and liquid flow rate have been studied. The results show that the evaporation quantity increases with the increase of microwave power, flow rate, and initial temperature, Under experimental conditions, the better operation condition is achieved at flow-rate of 40 L/h, initial liquid temperature of 50 degrees C, and microwave power of 1.35 kW, the evaporation quantity in the case of MFE is as high as 1.35 L in 20 min, but it is only 0.74 L in 20 min for CFE. The enhanced performance of MFE system is shown by comparing with the CFE system under the same conditions. Moreover, the energy efficiency is calculated and represented by a dimensionless parameter Gain Output Ratio (GOR), and the maximum energy efficiency for MSF system is about 79.38% at the better operation condition.