What Is Vapor Compression Distillation?
Vapor compression distillation (VC) is a process used to produce Water for Injection (WFI) on the principle of distillation, where the water is distilled with phase change and entrainment separation. In the VC process, the vapor produced by evaporating the water is compressed to increase the saturation pressure and temperature. This compressed vapor is then condensed to produce WFI by transferring its latent heat to infeed water in a heat exchanger.
Features of Vapor Compression
Can produce distillate at ambient temperatures and hot temperatures on demand
Typically has less stringent feed water pretreatment requirements
Provides a simpler pretreatment system
Makes variable production possible
Has a larger capacity, providing more significant utility savings
Benefits of MECO Vapor Compression Systems
The MECO VC features its patented technology, the GII Centurbo™ Compressor. This directly driven variable-speed motor eliminates belt drives, gear transmissions and flex couplings. Vapor compression distiller bearings are cooled with air and lubricated intermittently with oil. There’s no recirculating oil system with filters, coolers, pumps, plumbing, valves and instrumentation. No oil and filter changes. Maintenance goes down. Efficiency and reliability go up. You get longer runtime and fewer headaches.
Energy Efficiency
The energy consumption of your distiller represents the largest expenditure over its lifetime. MECO VC plants are the most energy efficient in the industry. Given the same feed water temperature, discharge temperatures and flow rates, the steam consumption of VC distillation plants should nearly be identical and significantly less than other conventional distillation methods. However, MECO’s large surface area evaporators use less electrical power, translating to the lowest cost per thousand gallons produced.
