Typical Applications In The Pharmaceutical Industry

The first is an example of Industrial Moist Heat Sterilization of Medical Products. The picture shows hook up details for a typical Sterilizer where either filtered plant or clean steam is being used.

The steam inlet to both the jacket and the chamber must be clean, dry and saturated. The jacket should incorporate corrosion resistant stainless steel Ball Float Steam Trap Module.

The chamber should be drained via a self-draining steam trap module with steam trap monitoring facility, which will ensure that no contamination can be caused by back flow through the trap during vacuum/pressure cycles.

Sterile barriers or block and bleed systems (shown in the hook up below) are used extensively in the pharmaceutical industry to prevent contaminating organisms from entering the process.

Fig : Sterilizer/Autoclave

In this application, the steam trap is directly coupled to the process pipework, which is normally of sanitary design. It is quite possible that contamination at the trap, caused by either biological or chemical (corrosion) means, could find its way into the process system, thus resulting in failure of a product batch. Steam traps with corrosion resistant materials of construction and self draining features will reduce the risk, taking sanitary standards one step further for the process.

Due to piping arrangements, process fluids will often be flushed through the trap. This can often result in plugging if standard industrial designs of trap are used.

Special Steam Traps are called for which have the features outlined above plus the ability for rapid removal from the pipeline and quick disassembly for cleaning.

Fig : Block and Bleed System





Fig : Sterilizer using high purity system

Fig : Tank Sterilization