Pharmaceutical Manufacturing - May 2009
VA LV E T E C H N O L O G Y
Aquasyn makes and markets high-purity diaphragm valves speci cally for the drug industry. “Most companies took their existing technologies and made them stainless steel for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries,” says operations manager Dean Richards. “We went out and talked to customers about what their requirements were, and then made our products speci cally for them.” One departure is what the company
calls Tork-Tite feet that establish metal-to-metal contact from bonnet to the valve body, eliminating the chance for overtightening and damage to the diaphragm, Richards says. ASCO Numatics, a division of Emerson Industrial Automation, recently introduced the Numatics Foundation Fieldbus H1 Valve Manifold, an automated product for on/o valve needs in life sciences. It’s the only valve manifold on the market with Fieldbus H1 protocol capability, says Bill Reeson,
Plants with su cient control channels, or segments, can get away with just one control network, he says. Festo is using piezo technology to enable valves to operate at lower energy levels, which makes them practical for Foundation Fieldbus or explosion-proof applications. Festo works with process valve and control device manufacturers to embed the technology into their products, says Craig Correia, Festo’s manager of Process Automation. ose applications for pharma would primarily be within positioners (or other process valve control devices) which require proportional control and low currents, Correia says. Millipore’s NovAseptic valves have a radial (as opposed to weir) diaphragm that, the company says, enables a ow path free of entrapments or impingements, meaning complete recovery of products from holding tanks or separation systems. e design also
closed vessels; and catalyst, defoamer, and additive initiation. Badger o ers a choice of 17 types of innervalves. Burkert Element valves (as well as sensors and controllers) are a combination of hygienic polymers and stainless steel, and handle corrosive solvents and chemicals or abrasive uids such as slurries.
e valves have LEDs or backlit graphics, and communicate with enterprise systems through a range of protocols. e
DELTA AP1
from APV is an aseptic stainless steel diaphragm valve with a fan support system meant to add diaphragm life.
the company’s senior marketing manager for the process control industry. “ e only limitation is how many I/O controls you have,” Reeson says. “Each manifold is one Foundation Fieldbus node, and it can automate up to 16 on/o valves.”
allows for easier cleaning and a lower likelihood of deadlegs, says Millipore. For SEC chromatography, for example, this means a reduced void volume and better performance. Shown here is a modular valve for ow control on a chromatography skid. Badger Meter’s SCV85 and SCV89 sanitary control valves are suited to the automated control systems found in biotech and pharma. Common uses are pressure, temperature and ow control in fermentation reactors; control of gas blankets in
e support system facilitates pressures up to 10 bar in open and closed positions. A at diaphragm design helps to reduce wetted surface and cleaning time. e Swagelok DR series radial diaphragm valves feature a single body valve design to minimize entrapment areas, and are meant to
PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING •
WWW.PHARMAMANUFACTURING.COM
MAY 2009
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