Lactic Acid Purification by Hybrid Short Path Evaporation

In this work, the evaluation of lactic acid concentration from synthetic mixture of water: lactic acid (36 wt% of lactic acid) was carried out using hybrid short path evaporation system. The system allowed to employ lower temperatures of operation due to the use of vacuum and presented short residence time, avoiding the tendency of lactic acid decomposition. The following operating conditions were used: feed flow rate of 8 mL/min, stirring of 750 rpm, pressure of 1 kPa and the evaporator temperature varied from 30 to 170 °C. The experimental results showed that maximum lactic acid concentration was obtained using evaporator temperature at 50 °C.