Consistency is key for many commercial industries. Businesses build their success on tight tolerances, effective equipment, and consistently precise temperatures. Whole batches of produce may well depend on fractions of degrees, so temperature control devices like jacketed vessels support entire workflows and revenue streams. Whether you’re making yoghurt or mixing liquid plastics, jacketed vessels offer a powerful, versatile impact on your process, so finding out more about the technology is well worthwhile.
What are Jacketed Vessels?
Jacketed vessels create a second cavity around storage containers and use a heat exchange medium to regulate temperatures. They’re either strapped or welded to the containers, and cover different portions of their surface, or even the whole thing.
Using various media at various temperatures, they can heat or cool the contents of your container to precise, and sometimes extreme, temperatures. Typically, they’ll use water, but steam, liquid nitrogen, and other chemicals with different thermal coefficients are also common.
Whether you want to set your jacketed vessels to sub-zero temperatures, well beyond room temperatures, or cycle them through pre-set temperature shifts, they unlock huge potential for low-maintenance processing and storage.
Industries That Benefit From Jacketed Vessels
- Beverage production and storage, including brewing beer and ale
- Agricultural and food industries, like dairy production
- Petrochemicals
- Healthcare and pharmaceuticals
- Industrial operations and construction applications, like roofing
- Any other industry relying on cooling, heating, or cycling industrial liquids
Common Applications for Jacketed Vessels
Jacketed vessels bring plenty of different applications beyond simply warming up or cooling down your products. Beyond the chemical and practical possibilities discussed below, they’re also precise, versatile, and iterative, so you can change your process at will for maximum quality.
Reaction Temperatures
Whether exothermic or endothermic, different reactions have different optimum temperatures for productivity. Setting your containers to these temperatures and maintaining them with jacketed vessels helps you increase production quantity, quality, and speed, supporting your clients and your cash flow.
Viscosity
Viscosity depends on a mixture’s energy and varies with temperature – generally, the warmer the mixture, the lower the viscosity. Increasing your temperature to lower your product’s viscosity makes mixing and pouring far easier, and other products require higher viscosity to suit consumer tastes. Either way, jacketed vessels support homogeneous viscosity tailored to your precise needs.
Cooling and Storage
Overheating causes different products to denature, expire, or pass their best. When businesses combat this phenomenon with jacketed vessels, they extend their product’s lifespan, protecting their stock and reinforcing their supply lines.
Common Types of Jacketed Vessels
Different types of jacketed vessels use similar systems to achieve a similar job. They typically use thermally reinforced steel, pressurised nozzles, and joints to account for thermal expansion and contraction. However, differences in design suit each system for your individual product needs.
Conventional Jacketed Vessels
The most common form of jacketed vessels, conventional jacketed vessels create a simple shell around the lower portion of your container. They don’t contain any intricate internal parts, but internal baffles redirect flow inside the jacket to increase turbulence and heat transfer. They’re perfect for smaller vessels and low-pressure media, around 100psi.
Coiled Jacketed Vessels
Instead of covering a container with a shell, coiled jacketed vessels use half-pipes full of fluid, welded in a spiral around the container. Different vessels coil them around the entire container, or use separate coil structures in different areas to maximise heat transfer. Due to the small circumference of the pipes, this system accommodates a far higher pressure, around 700psi.
Dimple Jacketed Vessels
Similar to conventional jacketed vessels, dimple systems create a thinner shell with divots distributed around the surface. These divots, like the baffles present in other systems, increase turbulence to optimise heat transfer.
Ken founded Scientific Glass Services in 1978 and has a wealth of experience developing custom-made scientific glassware, working closely with research laboratories, hospitals and universities. Ken and the team make bespoke laboratory glassware to your requirements or repair valuable broken apparatus, each piece being hand-blown from quality borosilicate glass.