Heating and cooling are essential processes in both personal and pet care industries, where maintaining precise temperatures is paramount for ensuring product quality and safety.

These industries rely on various heating and cooling processes throughout manufacturing, including:

  • mixing
  • blending
  • emulsifying
  • filling

Shell and tube heat exchangers play a vital role in achieving the desired temperature and consistency of personal and pet care products such as:

  • lotions
  • creams
  • shampoos
  • conditioners
  • pet foods

Processing facilities achieve uniform product blending largely due to consistent and accurate product temperature throughout blending operations. Enerquip shell and tube exchangers offer efficient heat transfer with both large and small batch products, providing consistency in product heating and cooling.

The technology ensures that products are safe, effective, and meet the high standards of these industries. With their ability to heat or cool products quickly and accurately, shell and tube heat exchangers are an essential component of the personal and pet care manufacturing process.

Heating and Cooling Applications in Personal and Pet Care

Shell and tube heat exchangers are commonly used in manufacturing for various processes such as heating, cooling, and condensing. Here are a few examples of how they are used.

CIP (Clean-in-place)

CIP is a technique that allows for thorough cleaning without disassembling equipment or wasted water. CIP systems use shell and tube heat exchangers to run water, steam and/or cleaning chemicals through the equipment, recycling the liquid when it’s complete. CIP is both an effective and environmentally friendly way to keep equipment clean.

Pure water heating and cooling

It’s vital to maintain quality and purity of personal care and pet care products. Essential for the safe and effective operation of the manufacturing plant, our experts can ensure your company has the right shell and tube exchangers for sanitary pure water.

In the personal care industry, pure water is used for the preparation of products typically to be used topically or by ingestion, and for the cleaning of those product-contact components. Because water is prone to endotoxins and microorganisms, equipment and procedures used to create and store pure water must be designed and fabricated to minimize contamination. The most common preparation techniques of pure water is distillation and reverse osmosis.

Distillation

In the distillation process, water goes to a still where it is heated until it is a vapor, stripping it of its heavier ions, particles, and endotoxins. That vapor is then passed through a series of tubes and recondensed back into its liquid form, becoming pure water. Enerquip’s shell and tube heat exchangers can also be used to create clean steam, which can then be condensed and treated as pure water.

Reverse Osmosis

In the reverse osmosis process, pretreated water is forced through a semi-permeable membrane. The pores in the membrane filter dissolved ions, salts, and organic compounds. Because the membranes can foul easily, it is important to ensure proper pressure and flow rates across membranes.

Once pure water is made, it is important that it is either used immediately or stored properly. Proper storing of pure water includes keeping it in motion and at high temperatures of around 90°F. Shell and tube heat exchangers play a crucial role in maintaining even temperature of pure water for storing and keeping it in motion. They are also used for heating the water up to 185°F during recirculation to prevent any contaminants like micro-organisms from forming, and then to cool the water back down to the optimum temperature for storage.

Evaporation

Used to boil off certain fractions of slurry, or to thicken product by removing some of the water through evaporation. Hot steam or thermal oil is used in the shell to boil the product in the tubes.

Heating/Cooling

Heat exchangers are used to heat or cool ingredients to the required temperature. For example, in the production of wet pet food, heat exchangers are used to heat the mixture of meat, vegetables, and grains before it is canned. On the other hand, in the production of dry pet food, heat exchangers are used to cool the mixture before it is extruded and formed into kibble.

Condensing

During the production of personal and pet care products, certain solvents and other volatile substances need to be removed through a process called condensation. Heat exchangers are used to cool the mixture to the point where the vapors condense and can be collected.

Pasteurization

Pasteurization is a heat treatment which reduces the presence of harmful bacteria in certain foods to make them safe for consumption as well as to extend their shelf life.

Products such as liquid and dried eggs, milk, cream, yogurt and ice cream and, in some cases meat, are often surface pasteurized with steam or hot water, using a shell and tube exchanger directly, or in addition to a hold tube in an HTST (high temperature short time) system. The product is then cooled back down quickly to prevent a negative impact to texture or flavor, and to prepare it for packaging.

Trim cooling

Process equipment such as pumps and valves can add unintentional heat to the product. Trim coolers counteract this by cooling the product.

Waste heat recovery

Heat exchangers and economizers can be used to recycle wasted heat into other areas of the process or plant.

In all of these processes, shell and tube heat exchangers are preferred due to their efficiency and ability to handle high pressures and temperatures. They are also easy to clean and maintain, which is important in high-purity industries where hygiene and safety are of utmost importance.

Advantages of Shell and Tube for Product Heating and Cooling

Shell and tube heat exchangers have several advantages over other types of heat exchangers for product heating and cooling in the sanitary industries, including:

Surface Finish: They are designed with stainless steel surfaces that are polished to low Ra finishes, which makes the surfaces resistant to product build-up and easier to clean.

Viscosity: Shell and tubes can process products that are more viscous than many other types of exchangers.

Visibility: They allow easier visual verification that surfaces are cleaned than a spiral exchanger or plate and frame exchanger, since surfaces can be viewed either through a sightglasss or with the use of a borescope.

Higher Operating Temperatures: Shell and tube exchangers can operate safely at much higher (and lower) temperatures than other designs and can be designed to work under vacuum or high-pressure conditions.

Variety of Configurations: Shell and tube heat exchangers can be designed in a variety of configurations, such as single pass or multi-pass straight tube units, or multi-pass U-tube units.

Variety of Installation: They can be designed to operate horizontally, inclined, or vertically depending on the space available for installation.

Customization: There are many options available for surface finishes, mounting supports, insulation jackets and process and utility connection types.

For decades, we’ve been designing and fabricating process equipment for many industries. Whether you’re in the planning phase or ready to order today, we can help. Contact us or request a quote today.

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