Tempco Blog articles

The employ of mono fluid thermoregulation is very much common in pharmaceutical and chemical industries production processes, used for the temperature regulation of reactors. Many and diverse are the applications, as these can involve small reactors used in laboratories or big reactors for the production of APIs, but also mixers employed for the mixing of chemical matters or cosmetics.

The basic concept of all these applications remains anyway the same, being it to maintain these systems at a certain temperature to prepare the product inside them thanks to a series of increasing or descending ramps of temperatures, with controlled cycles of heating and cooling.

Reactors are usually jacketed, and a fluid can flow inside the jackets, hot or cold, in order to heat or cool the product on the inside. A simple primary solution is to let different fluids flow within the jacket, for example steam and cold water, to achieve the temperature regulation. But during the switch between the fluids, the jacket must be completely emptied, avoiding potential contaminations of the fluids, and the new fluid must be pumped to completely flow inside the reactor, involving additional technical times.

The best solution is therefore to employ mono fluid thermoregulation, using a unique fluid that continuously flows inside the jacket that step by step gets thermoregulated at the right temperature required to heat or cool the product, by means of heat exchangers and switching valves. Based on a set-point configured by the production of the customer on a PLC, which is connected with the thermogulating unit, valves on the steam exchanger are opened in order to achieve heating, or otherwise commanding the valves on the cold water to cool the fluid that keeps on circulating.

There are clearly several and diverse systems, for example thermoregulating units with electrical heating section and cooling with water, or multiple stage thermoregulating units, steam heating or cooling with tower water or icy cold water, if very low temperatures must be reached. In fact, these are extremely customized thermoregulating units, even considering the fact they often operate in safe or Atex environments, or they are intended for installation within the United States, requiring UL certification, or in the Russian market, needing to be compliant with EAC regulations.

But after all the working principle remains the same, a unique fluid that keeps on circulating on the reactor side, getting heated or cooled by utility fluids that are fed into the thermoregulation unit. The advantages of mono fluid thermoregulation is therefore to have a constant circulation of the fluid, no contamination of working thermal fluids, and finally the possibility to achieve a wide thermoregulation range. With a very precise regulation of temperature and a fine control of the set-points, with strict tolerances, thanks to the use of PID systems, switching valves and highly accurate regulation systems.