Simulation of wort heating process due to the wort distillate vapor condensation heat and stillage cooling
The feasibility of using two different methods of wort heating is considered in the present study. In the first case, the method of wort heating in the standard tube heat exchangers is provided. It excludes supplying heterogeneous medium in the annulus and provides enhanced heat exchange efficiency and convenient use. Another possible solution of wort additional heating is the use of tube heat exchanger with two separate tube bundles, consisting of the same diameter tubes for the wort and stillage flows and annulus filled with heat transfer fluid. For both processes the calculation algorithm is given. It consists of three main units: modeling of wort heating in the heater sections; determination of the intermediate heat carrier temperature; calculation of the initial mixture temperature. The simulation program Mathcad-15 managed to identify and optimize the temperature of the medium in the characteristic points of the circuit. Comparison of the two heating schemes considered showed that total heat transfer surface in the second case is 21% higher than in the first one. The advantages of the first case of wort heating are smaller total heat exchange surface and the ability to use a standard heat exchange equipment. The disadvantage of this method is the necessity of installing a circulation pump. Production testing of the described above methods of the wort column supply heating was conducted in the wort rectification shop. It was found that the application of the proposed methods of further wort heating produces rectified ethanol of better quality and at lower power consumption compared to standard WRA.