What Criteria do we use to Design and Build Sanitary Jacketed Fittings, Tubing and Process Components?

January 15, 2014
Jacketed sanitary spools, elbows and a jacked sanitary ball type check valve

Jacketed sanitary spools, elbows and a jacked sanitary ball type check valve

Maintaining a constant product temperature can be critical in many sanitary processes.  The physical properties of many process fluids can change dramatically with variances in temperature.  To ensure contact product temperatures, many processes use sanitary jacketed piping systems.

We build a lot of custom jacketing sanitary piping systems, including jacketed spool pieces, tees, elbows, wyes and all sorts of valves, pumps, mag traps…..you name it.  In this post we wanted to detail the various issues we address to design and build the best sanitary jacketed process components possible.

Process Conditions
If you can give us an overview of you process and what you are trying to accomplish it is always helpful. On some occasions we may be able to offer suggestions that can prove to be more efficient, less expensive or both.  Jacketed sanitary process components are not cheap.  Here are some specific questions we ask.

  1. Are you cooling or heating and at what temperature?  This is especially important with high temperatures as it can significantly affect the design.
  2. What media are you planning to use to heat/cool?   Systems using steam can differ significantly from those using chilled water.
  3. What is the product pressure?
  4. What is the jacket media pressure?
Jacketed Sanitary Mag Trap

Jacketed Sanitary Mag Trap

Product Specifications

  1. What are the material specifications?  Some projects require 316L stainless steel inner piping but go with 304 jackets.  Some are all 304 and some are all 316L.  If you want stainless steel inner piping and carbon steel jackets, call somebody else.  We don’t allow carbon steel in our shop.  We can also build jacketed piping assemblies from more noble alloys such as Hastelloy and AL6XN.
  2. What is the line size?  We really just need your process line size.  We usually will specify the jacket size.
  3. What is the process line connection?  We have done Tri-Clamp, buttweld, bevel seat, I Line, Q Line, buttweld, you name it.
  4. What is the jacket media connection?  Our standard is ¾”FNPT, but again we can give you whatever you need.
  5. What is your polish spec?  Our standard process line ID polish is 20Ra, but again that is up to the client.  We can provide higher finishes as well as electropolish.  On the OD of the piping we can go anywhere from mill finish to 32Ra polish with the welds “as is”, to fully polished with welds ground and polished.
  6. Do you want us to include jumper hoses? We are your one stop shop for jacketed tubing. We can offer custom crimped jumper assemblies for pilot plants, or simply utility push on components and hoses.
  7. Do you have a jacket design pressure requirement?  We pressure test all of our jackets before shipping.  If you have a specific test pressure we need to know that for both design and pressure testing.
Jacketed Sanitary Waukesha Seat Valve

Jacketed Sanitary Waukesha Seat Valve

As far as other process components go, we normally look at these one piece of equipment at a time.  Seat valves, ball valves, check valves and diaphragm valves are pretty easy.  With pumps, we normally can jacket just the front cover and find that to be sufficient.  It important to keep in mind how long product will actually spend in specific piece of equipment when evaluating the need for a jacket.

So that is our quick overview of what we consider the main issues in providing jacket to sanitary process components.  If you have a piece of equipment to jacket that was not covered above, contact us and let us take a look at it.  We love a challenge.