Dry vacuum systems for chemical and pharma plants

By admin January 23, 2013 5:49 am IST

Dry vacuum systems for chemical and pharma plants
Dry vacuum systems are the changing face of the technology in the process industries and turns out to be the efficient, reliable and eco-friendly for pharmaceutical, chemical and petrochemical industriesFor decades vacuum pumps are being used for the various applications in the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical processes, such as in product drying, freeze drying, solvent recovery, evaporators, dehydrators, crystallisers and for other general vacuum applications such as conveying, regeneration of molecular sieves, vacuum filtration etc.
The boom in the global market in refined chemicals, medicines and other products led to the increase in the use of the vacuum equipment across all the process industries. The major concern in chemical and pharma processes is to offer vacuum systems capable of handling corrosive and toxic vapours and gases.
Earlier there were limited methods in the field of manufacturing which could help in reducing the waste contents but with the changing face of the world and the technological advancements industries learnt and shifted toward the advanced technology of vacuum pumps. Nowadays, almost 75 per cent of the process industries are using the vacuum pumps and allied systems in their applications. This has helped them to reduce their waste to a large extent and increased their production and profitability.
Following conventional vacuum pumps are being used in the process industry:• Liquid ring pumps/water ring pumps• Oil sealed pumps – rotary and reciprocating• Steam jet ejectors• Water jet ejectors.
For decades, applications demanding ultimate pressure below 1 mbar; oil-sealed rotary vane pumps were the most popular solution. All of the above (wet technology) utilise liquid media that can be oil, water, or steam to generate vacuum inside the given volume or the process.
During evacuation there is a carryover of the process solvent/vapour which contaminates the pumping media. The treatment of this contaminated medium is a major concern and a huge investment is required to treat it to meet the norms of disposal set by the Pollution Control Board.
Moreover, over a period of time the continuous contamination of the liquid media inside the pump leads to the corrosion and damage to the pumps internals, resulting in lower overall efficiency of the pump thereby affecting the process performance. This demands regular maintenance and has frequent breakdowns.
Dry vacuum pumps: State-of-the-art technologyIn the late 90’s, clean process requirements initiated the development of the dry vacuum pumps. In today’s date they are readily available and most of the process applications use dry pumps (Everest Dry Screw Vacuum Pumps) and dry pumping packages (Everest Supervac Series).

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