Latest Innovations Vol 14 - Pharmalab India Private Limited

ISSUE

Apr to Jun, 2021 Volume 14

LATEST INNOVATIONS

Advanced Automatic Loading & Unloading System for Terminal Sterilizers

With growing demand of Pharmaceutical products in today’s highly competitive market, improvement in production efficiency has become significant, in addition to capacity enhancement to meet the demand. Production efficiency is critical for the large volume parenteral manufacturing units as it processes higher quantities in limited time. While considering critical process like terminal sterilization of large volume products, it is important that the sterilizer operates with maximum efficiency. One of the contributing factors affecting the efficiency is manual loading and unloading of the product in sterilizer chamber. This consumes substantial amount of time and efforts of operating personnel in the process. Secondly, the sterilizer chamber is usually long (up to 10 meters length), which requires an additional arrangement to push and pull the load into the sterilizer chamber. Furthermore, manual loading & unloading task becomes cumbersome and uncomfortable due to hot condition within the chamber.

The solution is an Automatic Loading and Unloading System (ALUS). Today, conventional mechanical system for Automatic Loading and Unloading is available. The system is designed to reduce the manpower intervention, but it adversely increases other challenges. The conventional system is designed with its components installed partially inside the chamber and partially outside. To integrate the system, sealing arrangement such as mechanical seal or gland packing is provided. This sealing arrangement consist of parts like bearings, oil seal, etc. which demands regular maintenance. Lack of regular maintenance may result into frequent breakdown.

In line with the Pharmalab’s philosophy of continuous improvement, the R & D team have upgraded the existing system, operated through pneumatic cylinder, with an Advanced Automatic Loading and Unloading System. This advanced system is operated using servo motor drive. The Servo motor is a closed-loop mechanism that incorporates positional feedback in order to control the rotation or linear speed and position. It is a self-contained device that rotates parts of machine with high efficiency and great precision. Fundamentally, the servo motor drive offers smooth acceleration and deceleration in addition to better motion stability. In a terminal sterilizer, the servo motor drive is utilized for

a). loading of trays (filled with product) on the carriages through Scissor lift mechanism and
b). loading and unloading of the carriages to & from sterilizer chamber respectively.

For loading the trays on to carriage, Scissor lift (shown in FIGURE B) powered by servo drive is employed. Servo drive facilitates smooth and uninterrupted loading of trays as it allows fine control of the lift movement (in millimeter) during the operation. The carriage design demands this high precision in operation, as the tray holding channels, provided on the carriage, are placed close to each other, leaving no room for error.

After the carriages are loaded with trays, it moves in a linear direction on the guide rails for loading into the sterilizer chamber. The use of servo motor offers smooth and steady acceleration and deceleration during the start and stop of the carriage movement respectively. Having smooth start and stop avoids any disturbance or toppling of product placed within the trays. Moreover, the servo drive system provides flexibility in transmission speed. So, the speed of loading and unloading can be adjusted according to the production demand.

Additionally, the closed loop arrangement of Loading and Unloading on the guide rails restricts the carriage movement beyond the rail layout. This avoids a). additional space requirement for storage of carriages, b). damage of epoxy floor due to exposure of heavy carriage movement and c). foreign particles contaminating the chamber, carried along with the carriage wheels.

For more details contact Pharmalab on pharmalab@pharmalab.com

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ISSUE

Apr to Jun, 2021 Volume 14

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