I'm trying to compare the advantages and disadvantages of using a steam jacket on a reactor vs. an external heat exchanger. The steam jacket would be directly heating the reactor and the external heat exchanger would be heating the two inlet streams to this reactor. Please give a few advantages and disadvantages to each.
The steam jacket will give you much less surface area than an external heat exchanger. In addition, the heat transfer coefficient on the steam jacketed vessel will be poor unless you have a very high degree of mixing, and even then, I doubt you can get the velocity at the vessel wall to be in the same range of a properly sized external heat exchanger The only possible advantage of the steam jacketed vessel is the cost. You will save the cost of the heat exchanger. Since you will already have a pump to transfer the vessel contents, you don't save money there, and if you have an agitator installed, you probably won't save that much.
In addition to cost, steam jackets are used in many cases where you do not want to control the temperature precisely but just want things hot. Another application for jackets is the situation where the material being heated can plug a conventional heat exchanger's tubes.
hmm i dont know about heat exchangers but can you email me asap? i have some chem questions. thanks!
