Examining Evaporation

Evaporation is the removal of water from a solution by applying heat, usually for the purpose of concentrating the solution. It also produces pure water, in which case, if the water is the objective, it is called distillation.

The Basics
In its simplest manifestation, evaporation of sap from maple trees or of juice pressed from sweet sorghum is conducted in open shallow pans over a wood fire. An improvement to this process is the addition of baffles so that the fluid flows in a path across the p…