What Your Production Team Wants You to Know About Processing Vessels

Your processing vessels are used every day and are central to your operation, which means the production staff who operate your vessels learn very quickly of any shortcomings in the vessel’s design, capacity or features. These may include extra steps and effort required when loading ingredients, or features in the vessel itself that can impair efficient vessel operation and speed from batch to batch. Operators may adapt themselves to these shortcomings out of necessity, but these extra steps and effort are often a continuous drain on efficient vessel operation, impeding production efficiency.

That’s why you should always consider the tradeoff between operating your current vessel, with its known limitations, and the significant efficiency enhancements that can be gained by using a vessel that is custom-designed for your operation.

Your production team can be a great resource for ideas to improve efficiency and throughput and, of course, they should always be a part of the early design specification stage for every new vessel purchase.

The most common vessel enhancement requests from production staff

Here are some of the most common enhancement requests we get from vessel operators:

• Extended jacket sidewall to improve heating and cooling: More jacket area in your vessel means faster and more efficient heating and cooling cycles, for faster batch production cycle times.
• Agitator designs matched to the characteristics of the product being produced: Agitators designed with your product, and its ingredients, in mind, yield more efficient production and significantly greater product consistency from batch to batch.
• Streamlined vessel design to facilitate maintenance requirements: A vessel custom-made for your process can be optimized for faster and more convenient cleaning cycles, and built for easier service and maintenance access.
• Cover lift assist features for easier vessel access: Mechanical and power-operated vessel cover lift options boost production efficiency with every batch and add greater ease of use for vessel operators.
• Additional connections for temperature sensors, or product and ingredient inlet and output functions: Vessel options, such as sensors, sampling ports, or ingredient inlet or outlet features, enhance quality and production efficiency.
• Custom accommodations to improve clearance and placement next to other equipment in the production facility: Dimensional and placement modifications made to the vessel during its design stage allow for easier integration of the vessel in your production flow.

Compared to your current vessel, a production vessel designed specifically for your product and process may deliver enough productivity and cost-saving gains to pay back its original cost many times over. Analyzing your vessel’s current limitations, and the gains to production efficiency achieved by overcoming these limitations with a new, custom-designed vessel, can often yield surprising results.

For more information, download Has the Time Come to Replace Your Processing Vessel. We would also be happy to connect you with a Lee Industries Applications Engineer to review your specific situation.