Jacketed vessel

In chemical engineering, a jacketed vessel is a container that is designed for controlling temperature of its contents, by using a cooling or heating "jacket" around the vessel through which a cooling or heating fluid is circulated.

For a vertical vessel, the top head is typically left unjacketed.

Advantages include: ability to direct flow to certain portions of the jacket, such as only the bottom head when minimal heating or cooling is needed and the entire jacket when maximum heating or cooling is required; ability to provide a higher volume of flow overall (zones are piped in parallel) because the pressure drop through a zone is lower than if the entire jacket is a single zone.

Jacketed vessels can be employed as chemical reactors (to remove the elevated heat of reaction) or to reduce the viscosity of high viscous fluids (such as tar).

Agitation can be also used in jacketed vessels to improve the homogeneity of the fluid properties (such as temperature or concentration).