I.
INTRODUCTION
Agitators and agitated tanks are one of the basic functional unit operations of
chemical processes. They make up the building blocks of all storage, reactor and
separation systems. Here are the common considerations in their application.
There has been continued growth of refinery-based downstream processing involving
petrochemicals, polymers and specialty chemicals such as lube oil additives, high
impact, crystal and expandable polystyrenes, certain synthetic fibers, vat dyes, wire
enamels, automotive/airplane plastics, etc. Therefore, the ability to design for types of
equipment not typically associated with refinery units is now considered to be a useful
tool for the hydrocarbon processing engineer. Such a design area involves heat
transfer in agitated vessels such as Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTRs) or in
Batch Operations.
In an agitated vessel, for a given jacket fluid, heat transfer depends on the type of
external jacketing or coils being used, as well as the agitator. The processing and
nature of the reaction material typically determines the type of agitator. Many types of
agitators are available such as turbine types (curved-blades, flat-blades, retreating
blades), propellers, pitched flat-blades, helical ribbons, and anchors.
Heat transfer in agitated vessels can be carried out either through an external jacket on
the vessel or by internal coils. Where a jacket or coils cannot provide the surface area
required, a recirculation loop with an external heat exchanger may be used. In this
case the heat exchanger would be designed by the normal methods and will not be
covered further in this chapter.
A jacket may be either a full conventional jacket, a dimpled jacket, or a half-pipe
jacket, often called a limpet coil, as illustrated in Figure 1a, Figure 1b and Figure 1c.
The designs are compared by Markovitz (1971).
A conventional jacket has the advantage that it covers the full wall and base surface
and is very simple to construct. A dimpled jacket allows construction from light gauge
metals while maintaining strength. A half-pipe jacket may be cheaper for a high
pressure on the service side and has the advantage that more than one service can be
supplied to different sections of the wall. However, a limited amount of the surface
will be covered by a half-pipe jacket, the large amount of weld can cause mechanical
concerns where thermal cycling occurs and the jacket welding must be spaced from
the dished end main welds to maintain mechanical integrity of the vessel wall.
Internal coils may be full helical coils, or a number of smaller, ringlet coils. Figure a
and b.
A full helical coil is the more usual design, allowing the maximum surface to be
installed, but requires a two-piece vessel with a relatively expensive main flange.
Smaller ringlet coils are designed to be inserted through large branches on the upper
vessel dished end, but can leave quiescent, unmixed regions within their
circumference.
The choice between a jacket and coils is based on a number of considerations. For
highly corrosive or highly reactive materials, a jacket has the advantage that there are
no extra materials of construction and no extra metal surface in contact with the
process other than the normal vessel wall. There is also less risk of cooling fluid
coming into contact with the reaction mass. For the manufacture of pharmaceuticals,
fine chemicals and performance products, a jacket minimizes contamination as there
are no extra surfaces to clean. For materials with difficult rheology the full range of
agitator designs can be used with a jacket without difficulty. However, a jacket has a
lower heat transfer performance than a coil as there will be a lower process side
coefficient, usually a greater wall thickness, and a smaller surface area. A jacket may
also require a higher service side flow. For exothermic reactions, a jacketed vessel has
the disadvantage that the area/volume ratio decreases with increasing scale. The use
of a greater height/diameter ratio at larger scale can help to reduce this problem, but
only to a limited extent. A coil has the advantage that a large surface area can be
provided, for example, in one particular highly exothermic reaction 18 m 2m−3 has
been installed in a 5 m3 reactor. However, it is important not to pack the coil so tightly
as to form a false wall.
II. THEORY
Agitated vessel heat transfer is commonly used in batch manufacture where it is
frequently necessary to calculate the time to heat or cool a batch or the cooling
capacity required to hold an exothermic or endothermic reaction at constant
temperature. It may also be necessary to define the stable operating region or
acceptable reagent addition rate for an addition controlled highly exothermic semi-
batch reaction. The heat removal rate is defined by:
For the simple case of the time to cool or heat a batch of mass, M:
For a constant service side temperature, Ts, for example, steam heating:
The time to reach a temperature, T from a starting temperature Tt=0 is:
For more complex situations numerical integration may be required, but there are
many suitable dynamic simulation languages available. For coils and jackets, the
Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient can be calculated in the usual way:
where α and αs are the process and service side heat transfer coefficients, respectively.
The service side fouling resistance, l/αf, will be available from local experience or
from Kern (1950), for example. As a general guide, approximate overall coefficients
typical of agitated jacketed vessels are given in Tables 1 and 2.
Table 1. Typical overall coefficients for jacketed glass lined steel
vessels
Duty U (W m−2K−1)
Distillation/Evaporation 350
Heating 310
Cooling 200
Cooling (chilled service) 100
Table 2. Typical overall coefficients for jacketed carbon and stainless
steel vessels
Duty U (W m−2K−1)
Heating 400
Cooling 350
Cooling (chilled service) 150
A typical overall coefficient for a well-designed coil would be 400 to 600 Wm2K−1
REFERENCES:
http://www.thermopedia.com/content/547/
http://www.carmagen.com/news/engineering_articles/news134.htm
http://www.preprocessinc.com/files/documents/a9cd6a87dabdb91fec56f052761bbfdd.
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