Clean pharmaceutical containers dry
CO₂ Snow Blasting for Exterior Cleaning of Filled Containers
Bausch+Ströbel SE + Co. KG has been building and selling packaging and production systems for the pharmaceutical and related industries since 1967. From an initial four employees, an internationally active group of companies emerged with around 2,800 employees and an export share of over 90 percent, which is now one of the world market leaders in the pharmaceutical packaging sector.
On the customer-specific fill and finish systems, liquid and powdered medicines are filled fully automatically into vials, bottles, syringes or cartridges. This starts with cleaning and sterilizing the objects and extends to labeling or assembling the syringe.
Exterior cleaning with highly potent active ingredients
"Due to the trend towards the use of ever more highly potent active ingredients, there is the possibility that the outside of the containers could be wetted with a potentially dangerous substance after filling. We are therefore seeing increasing demand for solutions for external cleaning after filling. Not only do increasingly higher requirements for cleaning quality have to be met, but the reliable removal of product residues must also be proven," reports Werner Iländer, Group Manager Research, Technology, Pharma Services at Bausch+Ströbel.
Dry alternative to cleaning with ultrapure water
Exterior cleaning has so far usually been liquid-based by spraying with highly pure water and then drying with pure compressed air. To do this, a large amount of water must be treated in an energy-intensive manner and, depending on the product being bottled, disposed of as hazardous waste. This results in high operating costs for customers as well as high consumption of the valuable drinking water resource
"For these reasons, we looked for an alternative cleaning process with which this process could be carried out in a more cost-efficient and resource-saving manner and with a lower CO2 footprint. We had been working with the dry quattroClean snow jet cleaning technology from acp systems for some time and knew that very high levels of cleanliness could be achieved, depending on the substance to be removed. However, we did not have any valid data on the material compatibility of the process," describes Werner Iländer the initial situation.
The quattroClean snow jet cleaning is a dry cleaning process for full-surface and local applications that can be easily integrated into fully automated production lines. The cleaning medium is liquid, recycled carbon dioxide, which is created as a by-product of industrial processes and is used, among other things, in the food industry.
The liquid CO2 is passed through a wear-free two-substance ring nozzle and relaxes into fine snow crystals as it exits. This is bundled by a separate, ring-shaped jet of compressed air. Accelerated to supersonic speed, the easily focusable snow compressed air jet develops a combination of thermal, mechanical, solvent and sublimation effects when it hits the surface to be cleaned, on which the cleaning effect is based.
Removed contamination is vacuumed up in the compact cleaning cell, thus preventing back contamination of the parts and contamination of the environment. Since the crystalline carbon dioxide completely sublimes during the process, the surfaces that are cleaned without leaving any residue are dry - there is no need for complex and energy-intensive rinsing and drying processes.
acp systems AG www.acp-systems.com
Bausch+Ströbel SE + Co. KG www.bausch-stroebel.com