Solutions Ahead Blog

 

If you're in the market for a new vessel, our updated Glass-Lined Vessel Brochure is a great resource to help you figure out the best design for your process requirements. The brochure includes:

• A general overview of 3009 glass enamel and the glassing process
• Features and standard sizes of our CTJ, GL and SA reactor models
• Technical data on our line of horizontal and vertical storage tanks
• Upgrade options that can enhance the performance of your reactor (OptiMix baffles as well as other peripheral equipment)
• Information on other types of glass-lined equipment (nutsche filter/dryers, columns, pipe and fittings)

Click here to download a copy of the latest brochure.

If you are in the pharmaceutical or fine chemical industry, cleaning issues are probably one of your major priorities.  Product contamination can be detrimental to your business, so every step must be taken to ensure your system is thoroughly cleaned between batches.  By taking a systematic cleaning approach and creating a standard operating procedure, you can maintain the integrity of your product and ensure superior cleanability.  But how do you validate this?

Whether you are a first-time handler or an expert one, care and consideration must be taken when handling glass components.  Following a glass care regime will help to keep a clean and well-maintained plant as well as ensure there will not be any surprises while the reaction is happening inside.  Here are some general guidelines you should follow when servicing your glass equipment:

Spark testing is a standard procedure used for inspecting glass-lined equipment.  During testing, the entire glass-lined surface is examined, and any chips, cracks, pinholes and other defects are documented and marked for repair.

Glass-lined double conical dryers are a workhorse in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries, with a rigorous design that enables them to run for decades.  A common issue with these units, however, is the vessel's cleanability.  Enhancements are available that provide revamping possibilities that will improve not only the cleanability and filtration process, but will also significantly reduce the maintenance cycle time. This blog post features a case study that illustrates how an upgrade to the dryer vacuum tube can accomplish all of these improvements.  

The agitated nutsche filter/dryer is a multipurpose piece of equipment that you can find in a wide range of industrial processes.  Often found just downstream of a reactor or crystallizer, it has the important job of separating and isolating solids from a solvent.  It has certainly come a long way since its beginning, when the nutsche filter design consisted of an open vessel that simply used suction to achieve separation.  Modernization by Rosenmund started in the 1960’s, when the vessel design was enclosed for containment, enabling the introduction of pressure and agitation.  The closed system further allowed for process control on parameters like temperature, pressure, pH, and agitation.  In addition to expanding the unit’s operations, containment helped to protect operators from product environment as well as isolate the product from the atmosphere. 

(Note: This article was derived from Chemical Engineering Magazine’s April 2019 article Distillation: It’s What’s on the Inside that Counts by Joy LePree, featuring De Dietrich Process Systems.  For more information and to see the original article in its entirety, click here.)  

True “Win/Win” situations don’t come around every day, but when they do, they make everybody happy.  It can sound like a bit of a gimmick, but these circumstances do exist!  They occur when all participants involved mutually benefit from some type of exchange.

Aftermarket sales play a huge role in the life of your chemical process equipment.  When you spend the time and money to purchase a solution from a systems provider such as DDPS, there is a level of service and support that you come to expect when making an investment of this magnitude.  We're here to help you extend the life of your equipment and keep your system running safely and efficiently.  

The rigorous operations that most of your equipment undergoes makes it essential to keep spare parts on hand to help minimize downtime when service has to be interrupted for routine maintenance or part replacement.  In part 1 of this series, we talked about how to determine what spare parts you should have on hand.  In part 2, we discussed how to go about ordering a part and tips for identifying the part number of a QVF glass component.  In this third and final post, we'll tell you a little about our stocking programs and how you can benefit from enrolling your equipment. 

It's one thing to identify a part that you want to order (read our post on determining what spare parts to have on hand), but it can sometimes be challenging to figure out what information you need to get that part ordered.  De Dietrich Process Systems' Aftermarket Representatives are always on standby to help out with this, but we've also created some tools to make it easier for you to identify the information we need to provide you with an accurate quote.