Process for continuous digestion of finely-divided material with heat capacity flows of substantially the same magnitude

Claim 1

A process for continuous digestion at elevated temperature of finely-divided material by means of passing said finely-divided material through a heating zone, one or more digesting zones and a cooling zone in contact with a liquid phase, comprising feeding the finely-divided material into and withdrawing liquid phase from the inlet end of the heating zone in such relative quantities that their heat-capacity flows are of substantially the same magnitude, mixing fresh digesting liquor and the finely-divided material before being fed into the inlet end of the heating zone and bringing at least a part of the liquid phase withdrawn from the inlet end of the heating zone into indirect counter-current heat-exchange contact with spent hot liquid phase withdrawn from the outlet end of the digesting zone in such relative quantities that the heat-capacity flows of the liquid phases are of substantially the same magnitude and returning said part of the withdrawn liquid phase to the outlet part of said heating zone, and feeding cold displacement liquid into the outlet end of the cooling zone in such a net quantity that its heat-capacity flow is substantially of the same magnitude as the heat-capacity flow of the digested material and the liquid content thereof withdrawn from the outlet end of the cooling zone.