Glass-Lined Reactors

Glass-lined reactors are used worldwide, in very severe environments in chemical industries as well as for the glass layer sanitary properties in pharmaceutical industries.

The requirements for glass-lined reactors are reliability, safety, flexibility, efficiency, cost effective operation and availability for industrial processes.

In order to meet these requirements, especially regarding availability, in the 1980s, the European chemical and pharmaceutical industries defined and standardized, along with glass-lined chemical equipment manufacturers, a range of glass-lined reactors ranging in size from 63 litres to 40,000 litres and above, called “DIN reactors”.

Of course, for specific productions or applications, a standard DIN reactor may not be suitable, so Pfaudler manufactures and also customizes reactors according to the client’s specifications.

Composition of a typical glass-lined reactor

Typically, a glass-lined reactor, whether DIN standard or customized, consists of:

 A glass-lined inner vessel: starting from 4 litres, up to 80,000 litres, in which the reactive media is loaded and processed
 An external heating cooling system, in most cases, a jacket with agitating nozzles or, for specific conditions, half pipe circuits
 An agitator, single or multi-stage (up to 7 stages already achieved by Pfaudler through its Cryo-Lock system)
 Internals, such as removable baffles, dip pipes, instrument carriers (temperature, pH, corrosion monitoring, sampling systems, cleaning lances, etc.)
 An agitator drive with motor, gear box, coupling, mechanical shaft sealing units and now the modern INTERSEAL dry9000® technology for shaft sealing
 A bottom outlet valve
 Various support structures and heat insulation systems