Lyophilization or freeze drying
is a very important process
in the pharmaceutical industry.
It makes the shelf life of the product
more extensive, and it's mainly used
for vaccines or oncology products.
These products are
usually quite expensive.
Freeze drying is a very
energy-consuming process.
We try to change this.
Therefore, we came up with a new product
which we call ECO mode.
With the ECO mode, we can reduce the energy
consumption in the cooling process by 60%
and on the whole process by 21%.
The idea of ECO mode really comes
from sustainable perspective and really
to reduce energy in the process.
We developed this ECO mode and
at the end it is a software algorithm
which we can use for a freeze dryer
and it could be used for sure
for new machines,
but it could be also retrofitted for
existing freeze dryers and older machines.
The savings which we have calculated
in the simulation were confirmed twice
in the lab-scale unit, but also confirmed
in the industrial-style unit and
tested at customer site.
The main concern of our customers is
always product quality,
and with the ECO mode,
we don't touch product quality
because we can be ensured that via tests,
we really can confirm that the product quality will
not be influenced in a negative way.
Products and also product recipes
are validated so it's hard to change them.
What we are doing with this process is:
we will not influence the main drying
we will only influence the temperature
in the condenser, which has no impact
on the product itself.
And with that, we can save energy.
Besides that, we have also developed
ECO mode Plus, which is
a hardware adaption by side
of the software algorithm.
And that can reduce the energy consumption
and also your whole
process time even more.
