Stainless Steel Reactors

Stainless steel reactors are predominantly used in the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and food industries. Stainless steel reactors offer good resistance to corrosive products and are durable and tough compared to other types of reaction vessels.

They are used for a variety of process operations such as product mixing, chemical reactions, batch distillation, polymerization and much more. The operation they perform sometimes determines the name to which they are referred. Other terms used to describe reactors are hydrogenator, crystallizer and bio reactor.

There are a number of different grades of stainless steel that the reactor can be manufactured from with the most popular being 904L stainless steel, 316L stainless steel and 304 stainless steel. The grade of stainless steel will often depend on how corrosive the product is when reacted.

Most stainless steel reactors are fitted with a motor, drive, mechanical seal, agitator, baffles, internal coils and an external jacket. External jackets are used to add or remove heat during the reaction by introducing fluid to the jacket. They often surround the whole vessel and can be constructed of steel or stainless steel. An alternative to the single external jacket is the half coil jacket or limpet jacket.