Thin Film and Wiped Film Evaporators

An LCI agitated thin film evaporator (TFE) or wiped film evaporator (WFE or "wiffe") provides short residence time and open, low pressure drop configuration, allowing continuous, reliable processing of many heat sensitive, viscous, or fouling materials without product degradation.

Thin Film Evaporator Fast Facts

LCI Thin Film Evaporators provide successful concentration, distillation, and separation of the most difficult to process fluids with a combination of:

Extremely short residence time
High turbulence
Narrow residence time distribution
Rapid surface renewal

LCI’s thin film evaporators quickly separate more volatile from less volatile components using indirect heat transfer and mechanical agitation of a flowing product film under controlled conditions. Either the vaporized component (distillate) or the concentrated component may be the product depending on the application.

Common Operations for Thin Film Evaporators

Concentration
Resource recovery
Devolatilization
Evaporation
Purification
Finishing
Distillation / Fractionation
Solvent Recovery
Drying / Dehydration
Reactions
Reboiling
Stripping

Literature

Thin Film Evaporation Testing at the LCI Test Center process separations brochure
Overview of LCI's Thermal Separations Technology
Chemical Processing article describing thin film evaporation Thin Film Evaporator Operation
How Thin Film Evaporation Works Brochure Evaporator type chart
Evaporator Type Comparison Chart

Short Path Evaporators

Short path evaporation is excellent for gently processing heat sensitive, high boiling products. Short path evaporation perfectly complements LCI's thin film evaporation technology program, allowing us even greater capability to provide the right solution for your separation problems.

High Viscosity Processor

LCI’s high viscosity processor is ideal for various polymers, resins, highly viscous food products and many others because it provides higher heat and mass transfer rates for viscous fluids and reliability when compared to other types of evaporation equipment.