A BENCH-SCALE EVAPORATIVE CALORIMETER FOR DIAGNOSTIC AND CONTROL POSSIBILITIES IN VACUUM PROCESSES

For various chemical processes, heat and mass evaporative flows are ge nerated through vacuum control in order to ensure isothermal operation s or flexible tracking of temperature trajectories. To study such proc esses, a 5-liter bench-scale evaporative calorimeter is presented in t his paper. As an example, the application of this microcomputer-contro lled calorimeter to the on-line identification of the differential hea t evolution during batch evaporative crystallizations is reported. It is shown that satisfactory estimated results are obtained by means of a recursive least-squares policy. These results could allow an extensi on of diagnostic and control possibilities for many common processes w hich operate in vacuum conditions.