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US 5,340,443 AGranted
Distillation apparatus with paired membrane units
AssigneeAquamax Oy
InventorsTapio M. Heinio, Mauri Kontu
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Abstract
The invention relates to a distillation apparatus including a housing (1) a blower (2), preheat exchangers (7) and (8) and an evaporative condenser (25) comprising pairs (13) of membranes. One pair (13) of membranes at a time can be detached from the evaporative condenser (25) for replacement. The pairs (13) of membranes are preferably made of plastic or similar material and they hang down loosely in the evaporative condenser.
Claims7
A distillation apparatus comprising:
- a housing;
- a plurality of membrane units placed within said housing, each unit being defined by a pair of plastic membranes seamed together from their edges and having a support for hanging of the unit and an opening communicating with the inside of the unit, and each unit having an expandable structure with the pair of membranes joined together by a plurality of spot welds;
- means for clamping each of said membrane units together from said support to form a pack of membrane units, wherein the spaces between the adjacent units form an evaporator part of the apparatus and the spaces inside the units form a condenser part of the apparatus, said units being spaced so that on expansion the membranes of adjacent units make contact with each other at a number of points to form evaporator passages therebetween, and said clamping means being detachable to enable individual replacement of said units;
- means for generating a vacuum within said housing;
- means for feeding liquid to be distilled into said evaporator part;
- a blower for conveying vapor generated in the evaporator part via said openings into said condenser part;
- means for discharging residual liquid from the evaporator part;
- and
- means for discharging distillate from the condenser part.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.