steamaway

[maplekid]

i was pondering aruond the guys evap and he has a steam away and i didnt want to interupt his conversation but how do staemaways work

[Homestead Maple]

It is an equally sized pan that sits over your flue/rear pan. The pan has in my case, 3 v shaped troughs length ways of it that contain copper tubes, mine having 5 tubes per trough. 3 tubes over 2. Sap enters this area through a float system mounted on the side of the Steamaway, can be either right or left, and you adjust the level to a point where the sap level just covers the tubes to about a third of the length of them. (The tubes are sloped down ward from back to front.) Once the tubes are immersed in sap, start the evaporator and the heat/steam rising from the rear pan heats the sap in the Steamaway. Once the sap is fairly hot, it's time to start an air blower that comes with the Steamaway, which injects/blows air into the copper tubes in the troughs. The copper tubes have equally spaced, say 1/4 inch holes in to bottom of the tubes that allow the air to agitate the hot sap, hence acting like a boiling pan. So, you have sap that is heated by the rear pan and air agitating it, which acts as another evaporation area. The water that is being evaporated in your rear pan is condensing on the under side of the Steamaway and because the troughs above are in a flat bottomed v shaped the condensed steam from the rear pan is dripping off the bottom of the troughs, it lands into trays that carry the, now hot water, to a connection on the lower side of the Steamaway to a holding barrel to be used for whatever you might need some hot water for or to a drain outside the sugar house.
Before I installed a Steamaway on my 3x8 King evaporator, it would evaporate 85 - 88 gallons and hour. After installing the Steamaway, my evaporation rate was 143 - 147 gallons. Not a bad increase, (roughly 65%) just using the heat from the rear pan and some air. Some people get up to a 75% increase. Usually on the larger evaporators.
Now if you really want to concentrate some sap, think about an RO machine.
Kind of a rough explanation but hopefully it helps you and I'm sure others will add something I forgot.

[brookledge]

I think a key thing to remember about a steam away is that once you pay for it there is no cost except for a small amount of electricity to run the blower vs. a RO where it takes alot more electricity plus you need to have a heated room to keep it from freezing and there is a life span on the membranes.
I'm not taking sides I don't have either one and I know that the increase in efficiency is alot more with an RO but every one needs to look at whats best for there set up
Keith