Jacketed Glass Reactors, Heart of Chemical Process System

In this article, we are going to discuss a Scientific Glass Equipment known as Jacketed Glass Reactor.

Scientific Glass Equipment is widely used in laboratories and industrial research labs, chemical labs, and process plants, where pilot plants are used for capturing process data.

It is a crucial stage in scale-up from laboratory to full-scale production plants. A reactor is an essential part of almost all chemical process units.

It is rightly termed as the ‘heart’ of the system since it is the most critical component. 

A Borosilicate glass reactor offers a distinctive advantage of reaction visibility, which is impossible in other construction materials.

However, traditional eating methods the contents of the glass reactor forced the users to compromise on the visibility advantage.

This triggered the development of Glass Jacketed Reactor Vessels. 

Other advantages of borosilicate glass as a process media include its non-reactive nature with practically most chemicals.

Also, it is highly corrosion resistant and hence lends it self for use with a varied range of chemical reactions with different reactants and solvents.

What is a Jacketed Glass Reactor

A Jacketed Glass Reactor vessel is used to control the temperature of its contents, with the help of an additional glass jacket that surrounds the inner container in which the reactants are placed.

By design, a Glass Jacketed Reactor is a vessel that is enclosed by a jacket of glass where the heating/cooling fluid circulates to control the reaction temperature within the vessel. 

Heat transfer takes place through the borosilicate glass wall. The jacket is an isolated compartment around the inner vessel, and the contents of the vessel and the jacket do not come in direct contact.

The reaction media is being stirred continuously during the process of heating. This improves the homogeneity of the reaction mass, avoids localized heating along the walls of the reactor, and ensures uniform heat throughout the reaction mass. 

The jacket is provided with a separate inlet and outlet for the heating/cooling media circulation. Depending on the requirement, a nozzle for venting may also be provided in the jacket part. 

At times, an additional jacket is required for insulation purposes over the jacket used for heating/cooling fluid circulation.

In such cases, the double jacketed reactors (also known as triple wall reactors). This new jacket is vacuum sealed, and hence eliminates heat loss to the atmosphere.

This allows for the process to be monitored without any frost formation on the jacket’s outer surface, thus ensuring visibility even in cryogenic reactions. 

These reactors are provided with the usual accessories of a reaction unit such as stirrer assembly with drive, valves and supporting structure.

The further reaction assembly to be connected to a vapor nozzle can also be additionally provided, if required.

These are highly customized reaction units and are designed as per customer’s requirements. There are different capacities of Jacketed Glass reactors that are available.

The different sizes can be chosen depending on the process’s requirement, the batch size, and the solvent requirements in the batch.

Standard units are available for general reactions up to a capacity of 50 liters and are designed to fulfill the chemical and pharma industry’s actual needs.

Ablaze glass reactors are built for batch and semi-batch operation mode, with perfectly matched components and quality materials.

They conform to GMP / FDA Guidelines, and Explosion-proof installations can also be done if required. 

Ablaze is a global Scientific Borosilicate glass equipment manufacturer located at Vadodara, Gujarat, India.

These Jacketed Glass Reactors are widely used in various industries like chemical, food, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, APIs, dyes, aromatics, etc. 

 

 Features and usage

Do you know what a jacketed glass reactor and its features and usages are? We will enlist the key elements in this section. 

A jacketed glass reactor is essentially a reactor where a glass jacket has replaced the traditional heating oil bath.

This new, improved design offers distinctive advantages during operation. 

The heating media flow can be controlled and monitored with the help of vales placed at the inlet. A valve is not placed at the outlet of the jacket to avoid accidents.

If a valve was placed at the outlet, and it was closed by mistake, the pressure may build-up in the reactor jacket.

These design considerations from an operational point of view make Ablaze units sturdy and easy to operate. 

Heat transfer takes place across the glass wall between the inner vessel and the jacket, and the vessel is so manufactured that the jacket area always covers the nominal volume of the reactor.

The nozzles are provided with universal M16/M30 connections so that the reactor can be connected to any International reputed Temperature Control Unit (TCU).

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The jacketed reactor’s jacket also acts as a cooling jacket. A cooling jacket has the ability to stop the upward spiral of hotter temperatures increasing the rate of reaction that produces even more heat; and cooling liquids flow through the jacket resulting in collecting heat energy from the outer surface of the reactor. 

Salient Features:

• Complete visibility of reaction
• Minimized heat loss to atmosphere
• Ease of cleaning
• Reduced frost formation in cryogenic reactions
• Higher heat transfer efficiency
• Compact construction