Piggy Back

[Amber Gold]

Looking at different evaporators, I noticed that some list they have a piggy back system. I'm guessing it increases evaporation rate. I was wondering what it is, how does it work, and what are typical evap. rate increases.

Thanks

[halfast tapper]

Basicly it is another flue pan set on top of the bottome flue pan. The steam from the first pan heats second pan and it increases your evaporation. Not sure by how much , but it is pretty significant.

[brookledge]

To add to that. The basic design of that is like this. If you take a pan of water and heat it to say 170-180 and leave it alone not much happens, but if you aggitate it by stirring you will notice steam coming off the water.
With a steam away the steam from the flue pan heats the sap and then a blower blows air through tubes to aggitate it and that allows alot of steam to escape with out using any more fuel.
Keith

[Amber Gold]

Keith,

Somewhere I came across someone who had an evaporator with air injection tubing (bubbler) into his syrup pan. Does this have the same effect of increasing the evap. rate of the syrup pan?

[peacemaker]

a bubbler or air injection speeds up the boil by giving more surface area for boil to form .but also is suppose to produce less sugar sand and lighter syrup but is also suppose to lower the flavor intensity ...

[maplecrest]

the bubbler cools the sryup pan

[DS Maple]

If run correctly, PiggyBacks and SteamAways should increase the evaporation rate by about 75% without any additional fuel.

[mapleack]

Air bubblers in syrup pans or flue pans do not increase the evaporation rate.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Im under the impression that air injection in the steam away will help in the evaporation by unlocking the steam in the sap that is not boiling. Air injection in the flue pan will give you lighter syrup with NO decrease in flavor and will help decrease the niter....sugarsand when using a RO. Now for the BAD part of air injection in the flue pan unless the air you are injecting is the same temp as the boiling sap you will DECREASE the evaporation rate in your flue pan! Room temp air will cause a 8% decrease in evaporation. My understanding is that you have to be very careful of the air you inject that you dont add unwanted flavors. The use of a High volume low pressure blower with filtration is important. NO OIL TYPE PUMPS.

[Amber Gold]

Are Steamaways and Piggybacks the same thing just different manufacturers?

[DAVE]

They accomplish the same goal but done in a slightly different way. For a complete description of each check out US patent #s 4819615 and 4953538 for piggy back, 5275666 for steam away.and 5772774 for one that CDL builds. Or just do a search on piggy back evaporators and the patent site will be in the search list. dave