The evaporation process in raw sugar manufacturing consists of juice heater, multiple-effect evaporator, and crystallizer. Two performance parameters of the evaporation process are the rate of processed sugar juice and the steam economy, defined as the ratio between water content of sugar juice entering the process to the amount of steam required to run the process. If the total surface area of the multiple-effect evaporator is fixed, the performance parameters are affected by the distribution of the surface area among the effects of the evaporator. Although the optimization of evaporator surface area distribution has been investigated in previous studies, they have considered only the multiple-effect evaporator, and overlooked interactions between the three components of the evaporation process. The current investigation proposes a model of the evaporation process that takes into account interactions between the three components of the process through mass and energy balances. The model is used to find the optimum surface area distribution that maximizes the rate of sugar juice processed by the system and the optimum surface area distribution that maximizes the steam economy are different.