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Quotes - Engineering - Sales| PRODUCT | STYLE | TEMA TYPE | BUNDLE |
| U-Tube Heat Exchanger | U-Tube, single tubesheet | BEU / AEU / BKU | Removable |
Bioprocess U-Tube Heat Exchangers
Supporting a Fermentation Suite
Very little bioprocess heat transfer is difficult in the thermal sense. What makes it exacting is everything around the duty: hold-up volume that becomes product loss, shear that damages cells, cleaning between campaigns, and a documentation burden inherited from the pharmaceutical side of the plant.
Media preparation and sterilization. Heating media to sterilization temperature and cooling it back down without cooking the components that matter. The cooling step usually sets the exchanger size because the approach temperature is tight.
Fermenter temperature control. Removing metabolic heat through a jacket or external loop, where the control requirement is stability rather than capacity, and turndown across the growth curve is wide.
Harvest and buffer duty. Cooling harvest streams quickly to preserve product, and bringing buffers to temperature. Gentle velocities matter here; so does hold-up, because whatever stays in the exchanger is product that did not reach the next step.
Typical Construction
- Typical duty: Media prep, fermenter cooling, harvest cooling, buffer heating
- Wetted material: 316L, dual certified
- Surface finish: Mechanically polished or electropolished to specification
- Hold-up volume: Minimized; reported at quotation
- Velocity: Selected for shear-sensitive streams
- Tubesheet: Single or double with vented interspace
- Cleaning: CIP and SIP capable, drainable in installed orientation
- Turndown: Sized across the full growth curve, not one design point
- Connections: Sanitary clamp, sized to the process line
- Codes: ASME Section VIII, ASME BPE where specified
Bioprocess U-Tube Heat Exchangers
U-TUBE • CONSTRUCTION
ASME BPE U-Tube
ASME BPE U-tube heat exchangers: surface designations, weld examination, dead-leg ratios, drainability and the documentation package your qualificatio
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U-TUBE • CONSTRUCTION
WFI & Pure Steam U-Tube
WFI and pure steam U-tube heat exchangers. Double tubesheet construction, 316L electropolished surfaces, and design for hot loop sanitization cycling.
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U-TUBE • CONSTRUCTION
Sanitary U-Tube
Sanitary U-tube heat exchangers in 316L with tri-clamp connections, drainable geometry and removable bundles. Built for 3-A duty and CIP circuits.
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Hold-Up and Turndown Matter More Than Peak Duty
Sizing a bioprocess exchanger on the peak load alone produces a unit that is oversized for most of its operating life and holds more product than it should. Both are real costs, and the second is the one people notice.
Tell us the range rather than the maximum. Knowing that a fermenter cooling loop spends most of a campaign at a fraction of peak metabolic heat changes the pass arrangement and often the exchanger size.
Cleaning Between Campaigns
Changeover is where bioprocess equipment is really tested. The exchanger has to clean reliably, drain completely, and demonstrate both. That points toward vertical orientation with the process fluid on the tube side where drainage is gravity-assisted, or a properly sloped horizontal shell where it is not.
Where the same equipment serves multiple products, carryover is a regulatory question as much as a technical one. Design for the cleaning validation you will have to perform, not the one you hope to.
