Corn Wet Milling
Starch slurry to high-fructose corn syrup — saccharification, isomerisation, SMB enrichment and syrup evaporation.
The actual dark-mode canvas: a starch slurry saccharified to glucose, part-isomerised to fructose, enriched by simulated moving bed, and concentrated to syrup in a two-effect evaporator.
Why the syrup evaporator needs a sugar activity model
Glucose isomerase stops at about 42% fructose — that is its equilibrium, and it is precisely why an SMB sits downstream: the reaction cannot reach HFCS-55 on its own. The evaporator is the subtler one. Model the sugars as inert solids and it is bimodal: it either does not boil or boils to dry sugar, because nothing raises the boiling point as the liquor concentrates. The Norrish activity model supplies that elevation — 7 K at 71 wt%, matching published syrup data — and syrup concentration becomes a smooth, controllable function of steam.
Unit ops shipped for this vertical
Simulated moving bed via its true-moving-bed equivalent — continuous, not a batch column.
Process feed against heating steam — concentrated liquid, vapour boil-off and steam condensate in one balance.
Stream evaporator steam rate, effect pressures and syrup density from the plant historian into this flowsheet's twin comparison — syrup concentration is the controlled variable the whole evaporator train exists to hold, and steam per tonne of solids is where the energy bill is won or lost.
See the Digital Twin platform →Try it yourself
- ✓Isomerase at its real 42% equilibrium
- ✓Syrup to 77 wt% — commercial HFCS spec
- ✓Real boiling-point elevation from a sugar activity model