Fluid Bed | High Shear mixers | Drying-Granulation-Coating

Eco-friendly Equipment with Long Service Life

Turnkey system from OYSTAR Hüttlin: Innovative HKC 400 DJ Closed-Loop Plant for Ferring Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland

Schopfheim / Germany, June 2008

OYSTAR Hüttlin has set a milestone for Ferring Pharmaceuticals located in Saint Prex in Switzerland: An environmentally friendly closed-loop plant for organic solvents has been installed at this highly specialized biopharmaceutical manufacturer’s facilities. An HKC 400 DJ based on patented disk jet technology forms the heart of this fluid bed system.

Ferring had multiple reasons for selecting this technology: It has increased the level of automation and equipment service life, shortened process and cleaning times, speeded up filling and discharging, and significantly reduced nitrogen consumption.
Designed and engineered to Ferring’s specifications, the equipment was commissioned after only eight months. Prior to installation, the system was tested on a small scale at the OYSTAR Hüttlin laboratory; the required capacities and parameters were then scaled up for the Ferring plant. The HKC 400 DJ and peripheral units – air dehumidifier, low-temperature condensation unit, process gas heater, HEPA filters, deduster and ventilator – form a closed loop with nitrogen. The equipment is extremely easy to operate and satisfies the most exacting environmental standards.

Ferring manufactures innovative pharmaceuticals for reproductive medicine, urology, chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, endocrinology, and obstetrics. The company sees it as its mission to provide medications in these therapeutic areas that enable physicians to optimize their patients’ treatment “on the body's own terms,” as Ferring puts it.

An equally innovative industry partner in its own field, OYSTAR Hüttlin engineered a tailor-made fluid bed system for Ferring. Solids are fluidized in this unit by means of a special patented “disk jet” gas distributor plate through the inflow of process gas. This process generates a torodial product flow, which provides complete and gentle mixing and homogenous spraying. Depending on the process gas conditioning, the solids can be dried, heated, moistened, cooled, or agglomerated by the injection of excipients. Coating agents can be sprayed onto the fluidized product to coat particles.

A closed-loop system for process gas with an integrated two-stage solvent recovery process supports environmentally sound and economic operation of the equipment. A brine-cooled condenser and low-temperature condensation unit with liquid nitrogen allow the organic solvents to be almost completely recovered.
The three-component nozzles spray the coating fluid directly into the fluidized product, such as pellets. The nozzles are cleaned with pure organic solvents in an integrated process step. This enables the nozzles to remain in operation over long periods.
The equipment has to be cleaned before changing over to a different product or at the end of a campaign. The Ferring plant is cleaned according to the Clean-in-Place principle (CIP). The advantage of this method is that the equipment does not need to be dismantled.

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