Challenge Accepted: A Tight Fit

The Challenge: Fitting a 400-Gallon Vessel In a Confined Space

Challenge Accepted is a periodic review of how we solved a unique customer challenge.

Summary: What do you do when regulations demand a 400-gallon vessel, but your plant layout says no way? For one pharmaceutical processor, Lee Industries had to engineer around space limitations, revalidation risk, and utility restrictions. Their solution, an ultra-deep vessel paired with a custom vertical hydraulic lift, enabled full functionality in a confined space while keeping the validated process intact. It’s a prime example of creative engineering under pressure.

Innovative Problem-Solving in a Space-Constrained Facility

Maneuvering around the physical constraints of a plant is a common challenge for processors. But for one of our pharmaceutical manufacturing customers, a particularly difficult space problem required a particularly innovative solution.

To keep up with growing production demands, the customer needed to add a vessel to its processing line.  Regulations governing the topical manufacturing industry required that any new vessel must match the 400-gallon batch capacity and overall performance of the process that had previously been validated.

Any variation from the process would trigger an extremely expensive and disruptive revalidation. This was a problem, since the customer did not have enough physical space to install and operate another 400-gallon vessel.

“We’re out of options,” the exasperated client said.

The Solution: Design Engineers Propose a Vertical Hydraulic Lift

The customer’s space restrictions limited the new vessel to a diameter narrower than a standard 400-gallon vessel.  So, to achieve that volume, the vessel would have to be made much deeper than normal.  Simple solution, right?  Not so fast.

That type of change can dramatically affect:

• heating
• cooling
• agitator lift
• mixing functionality

While Lee engineers were unfazed by the heating, cooling and mixing challenges – they’re quite used to managing performance in a variety of sizes and shapes –agitator lift and cleaning issues had their attention.

The customer’s product was thick and sticky, meaning mixing-scrapers would have to be removed and cleaned after every batch, and the narrower, deeper design would prevent our normal agitator tilt functionality from working.

Engineering Breakthrough: A Vertical Hydraulic Agitator Lift

After onsite visits and several brainstorming sessions, Lee engineers devised a brilliant solution. They designed a vertical lifting hydraulic cylinder device to raise the agitator out of the vessel, then rotate it out for easy access.

While this idea made it possible for a 400-gallon vessel to operate in the confined space, a few more challenges had to be overcome to turn it into reality.

The facility’s ceiling was too low to accommodate the full vertical lift distance.  Our solution?  Mount the base of the system below the floor!

Further complicating the matter, the facility’s only utility runs and hydraulics controls were located on the other side of the building.  To solve that, we supplied a separate hydraulic power pack dedicated exclusively to this vessel.

The results have been spectacular:

• The vessel operates continuously
• Gives the customer the needed production capacity
• Makes it easy to clean and maintain
• Improves the accuracy of its load cell product weight measurement, as measurements are now taken with the agitator centered above the vessel.

It’s a great example of how experienced engineers with a customer-focused mindset can make good things happen.Challenge solved!

Have an engineering challenge you need to solve for your processing operation? Tell us about it.

Key Takeaways

• Regulations required a 400-gallon vessel with identical performance to a previously validated process
• Lack of floor space demanded a narrower and deeper vessel design
• Standard agitator removal wasn’t possible due to shape constraints
• Lee engineers designed a vertical hydraulic lifting system for agitator access
• Mounting the base below floor level overcame ceiling height issues
• A dedicated hydraulic power pack handled remote utility limitations
• Final solution enabled cleaning, operation, and validation compliance in a tight footprint

Last Updated: 10/17/2025