The Challenge
A pharmaceutical manufacturing facility was experiencing significant bottlenecks in its batch reactor operations due to the reliance on traditional steam-heated reactor jackets. This legacy approach introduced several critical inefficiencies:
- Extended cycle times, caused by slow and inconsistent heating to the required process temperatures, which limited batch throughput.
- Hot spots and uneven heat distribution, compromising product quality and risking degradation of heat-sensitive compounds.
- Lengthy transitions between heating and cooling, delaying the start of subsequent batches.
- Inconsistent temperature control across multiple reactors, each requiring independent setpoints—complicating sequential process operations.
Key Requirements
To address these challenges, the facility needed a modern heating solution capable of:
- Providing fast, uniform heating across multiple reactors with independent temperature control.
- Enabling precise and responsive temperature modulation to minimize overshoot and reduce overall cycle times.
- Eliminating direct steam contact within the jackets to protect delicate glass-lined reactor vessels.
- Maintaining tight control over critical temperature profiles for sensitive chemical reactions.
- Facilitating seamless transitions between heating and cooling to maximize batch efficiency.
The Solution
The facility implemented a ProSonix Direct Steam Injection (DSI) heater inline with a central recirculating hot water loop serving multiple jacketed reactors. This centralized approach enabled the plant to:
- Accelerate operations, achieving process temperatures quickly and allowing for rapid vessel cooling between batches.
- Replace multiple steam control loops with a single high-performance DSI system, delivering flexible and scalable heating across multiple vessels.
- Leverage ProSonix’s internal steam modulation for instantaneous, smooth, and accurate temperature response.
- Ensure even and immediate heating of jacket water, eliminating hot spots and improving thermal consistency.
- Protect glass-lined jackets by removing live steam exposure—only tempered water reaches the jackets, eliminating the risk of steam hammer and thermal shock.
Results & Benefits
After installing the ProSonix DSI system, the plant saw several important improvements:
- Heating bottlenecks were eliminated, significantly reducing batch-to-batch times and increasing plant throughput.
- The central hot water loop supports multiple vessels, each with independently controlled setpoints.
- Precise, stable temperature control improves product quality and consistency, especially for sensitive chemistries.
- Glass-lined reactors are shielded from thermal shock, reducing maintenance costs and extending equipment life.
- Faster heating and cooling transitions shorten batch cycles and improve production flexibility.
- Reduced need for operator intervention, increasing overall reliability and process uptime.
Summary
By replacing live steam heating with a ProSonix DSI system in a central hot water loop, the plant resolved long-standing heating inefficiencies and protected its glass-lined reactors. The result: faster, safer, and more flexible thermal control across multiple processes. ProSonix DSI provides a scalable, high-performance solution for modern pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing, reducing downtime, improving quality, and enhancing plant-wide efficiency.