To study the concentration characteristics of mechanical vapor compression (MVC) technology on the wastewater concentration process, a single-effect MVC system for concentrating dimethylacetamide wastewater was investigated. The performance of the MVC experimental system was evaluated under different levels of distillation pressure and concentrations of the raw solution. We demonstrated that under conditions of atmospheric distillation (evaporating temperature was 100 degrees C), the COP and distilled water production rate of the experimental system reached 20.17 and 70.80 kg/h, respectively. In the distillation operating cycle, the DMAC solution was concentrated from 6% to 83.5%. In addition, when the system was under vacuum conditions (evaporating temperature was 55.8 degrees C), the COP and distilled water production rate were 5.44 and 18.2 kg/h, respectively, and the concentration of the DMAC dilute solution was only 0.2%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.