Increased yield and productivity in the agrochemical industry with BE reactors & Cryo-lock® agitators

Customer Introduction & Requirement:

The GMM Pfaudler Group previously executed a new project for a large, India-based agrochemical company. The customer had shared their technical specification and varying requirements. Pfaudler combined its strong technical skills and the Group’s overall capabilities to successfully complete the project. After a few months of commissioning, the customer turned to the GMM Pfaudler Group to look at improvements in productivity and yield.

Challenge to overcome:

The plant was built based on customer’s research and data. During commissioning of the new facility, the customer saw a shortfall in yield and productivity in comparison to the anticipated forecast. The customer approached the GMM Pfaudler Group to identify the issue and find a viable solution to increase the yield.

GMM Pfaudler Group approach:

1. The customer had planned to expand its facility, however the loss of yield was a major concern and hence approached to the GMM Pfaudler Group find a viable solution to increase the yield.

2. Pfaudler sent a team of engineers to the customer site to observe / study the operation and process in detail.

3. Pfaudler’s engineers identified the agitator set up as a opportunity for improving the performance. The CE style reactor had a single stage, onepiece construction welded agitator which was not giving adeguate mixing performance for the desired productivity and yield. Our team reviewed and found 2 point to address: insufficient mixing as observed by reviewing the flow pattern and low heat transfer performance.

4. Pfaudler’s engineers offered up a technical solution to address both points above by replacing the existing CE style reactor that had a welded one-piece agitator with a BE style reactor that had a specially designed Cryo-lock® 2-piece, multi-stage agitator.

5. The customer took Pfaudler’s recommendation and installed the new design, BE style reactor with the special Cryo-lock agitator, for its phase 2 expansion.

6. After commissioning phase 2, the customer confirmed that they were able to achieve the desired productivity and yield.

Results:

Seeing the success of phase-2, which had a total of 26 reactors, the customer decided to replace all phase-1 reactors with BE style reactors complete with Cryo-lock® agitators. With the new set-up, the customer is now reaping the benefit of increase in yield and productivity.
 

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