Concentrate % Through steam away

[calvertbrothers]

Hey I hate asking a lot of questions on here but I ordered a another bigger ro to get me close to 15% concentrate in one pass and I should be done boiling after 3 hours on my 2x6 max flu pan. But plan on adding another 1000 taps each year. To keep time down because I have a day job and starting a family. I was thinking of adding a steam away to it next year and hope I can get a few more years out of it. But how high of brix can I run though a steam away? And I have been looking at the steam away for my rig and found out the steam away would be different than a normal flue pan because of the max flue. Idk if it made a difference.

[fred]

Steamaways dollar for dollar can't compete with an RO. Plus they make darker syrup.

[DaveB]

The manual doesn't specifically mention a limit:

https://www.leaderevaporator.com/pdf_files/Steam-Away_Instructions_2017_and_newer.pdf

Based on previous discussions it will increase the brix by 2-3% coming out of the steamaway but the sap will also be 210° instead of just coming from the feed tank so you'll gain efficiency in your max pan. The combination is where the 60-70% increase in evaporation comes from. You can do the math on what you get now for GPH and multiply it by 1.65 to get your new rate.

[nymapleguy607]

When I was boiling raw sap I checked the sugar between the steamaway and the flue pan. I was putting 2.5% sap into the steamaway and getting 6% out. I am running about 8% into the steamaway now without any issues.

[calvertbrothers]

When I was boiling raw sap I checked the sugar between the steamaway and the flue pan. I was putting 2.5% sap into the steamaway and getting 6% out. I am running about 8% into the steamaway now without any issues.

Thanks for the info

[Potters3]

Ran a steamaway for several years at the old workplace. Leader said add 50% to sugar going in to out as a rule of thumb. So 10 in 15% out, when we added it we went from 120 gpm thru put to a little over 200 gpm thru put. Was well worth the money, but that palce was limited on power so we didn't run a R/O. We didn't find we made darker syrup and it gave us a mountain of very hot water to clean everything with.

[DrTimPerkins]

Our experience (3' x 10' with MAX Backpan and Enhanced Steam-away) boiling 10% concentrate was about a 50% increase in Brix level along with a 70% increase in evaporation rate while producing about 1.5 gal/min of HOT water (condensate).

We did a lot of experimentation also with plate heat exchangers using the hot condensate to preheat the incoming concentrate. It was very simple and worked well, with about a 7.5-8.0% increase in overall evaporation rate/efficiency, but it decreased the temperature of the condensate from about 200 deg F to 50-60 deg F. We preferred having the hot water, but some may like the efficiency boost it provided.

[Maple Man 85]

I watched the previous owner of my evaporator run 20% into a steam away and still created an exceptional quality syrup he went from 400 gal per hour with max flue pan to 700 gal with an enhanced steam away. We made almost 10 barrels of syrup in 6 hours from startup to shut down it was awesome!

[markcasper]

I watched the previous owner of my evaporator run 20% into a steam away and still created an exceptional quality syrup he went from 400 gal per hour with max flue pan to 700 gal with an enhanced steam away. We made almost 10 barrels of syrup in 6 hours from startup to shut down it was awesome!

With that being said, what year was this? Assuming that it was this year, many had a pretty rough time making any dark syrup no matter what you did.

[Maple Man 85]

With that being said, what year was this? Assuming that it was this year, many had a pretty rough time making any dark syrup no matter what you did.

It was 2017 when I purchased it, I did not buy the steamaway because we only had 3,000 tapped for 2018. In the next 3-5 years we'll be purchasing a new steamaway as we grow but don't plan to pull that trigger until we see 9,000 or so tapped.