• Resources Recycling
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.28-36
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• 2000

This study describes to analyze the characteristics for separation and recovery of both the dried particles and the purified solvent from the waste solvent through the vaporization process by the continuous and instantaneous vacuum drying system. The vacuum drying system for the waste solvents recovery consists of a feeding pump, a double pipe heat exchanger, a vacuum spray chamber, and a condenser. The vacuum drying system heats the waste solvent to the vapor in the double pipe heat exchanger and the expanded vapor is sprayed at the end of the tube. The vaporized solvent in the condenser are recovered. The particles in the waste solvent are separated and dried from the vapor in the vacuum spray chamber. Performance evaluation of the vacuum drying system was conducted using the mixture of the dried pigment particles and benzene or alkylbenzene as test samples. For the mixture of 10 wt% pigment particles an 90% benzene, the recovery efficiency of benzene was 88% with the purity of 99% and the recovery efficiency of dried particles was 94% with the moisture of 1.1 wt%. The size of pigment particles was decreased from $6.5\mu\textrm{m}$ to $5.6\mu\textrm{m}$ in diameter due to high speed spraying and dispersion in the vacuum drying system during drying process. Therefore, the vacuum drying system showed to be an effective method for separating particles and solvent in the waste solvent.