PSL offers CakeStand tray dryer for temperature- and oxygen-sensitive products

Published: 18-Mar-2015

Allows capacities from kg to large-scale production

Powder Systems' CakeStand tray dryer is a vacuum drying oven with an innovative hanging shelf design providing enhanced drying for high grade, temperature- and oxygen-sensitive products.

PSL launched this new tray dryer design a few years ago to overcome difficulties with traditional vacuum ovens such as poor heat uniformity, difficult cleaning for pharmaceutical grade and GMP requirements and challenging scalability and ergonomics.

The CakeStand tray dryer allows capacities from kg to large-scale production thanks to a modular design and provides technology scale-up from R&D and process development to commercial manufacturing of APIs, HPAPIs and other pharmaceutical compounds.

Typically, static drying is required to eliminate residual moisture content from hygroscopic substances and is found at the end of the upstream process line following reaction and filtration.

Static drying under vacuum has been used in pharmaceutical manufacturing for decades but PSL developed a ground-breaking design that provides both high quality and performance. The wet substances contained in trays are in direct contact with the heated shelves where heating fluid uniformly circulates. The walls can also be heated and provide an optimum vacuum drying process for enhanced drying time and homogeneous dried finished product.

To prove such heat uniformity across all heating plates, PSL engineers performed temperature mapping tests on a 12-shelf CakeStand tray dryer showing a maximum recorded temperature variation of +/–1.0°C between the shelves. Nitrogen can also be injected into the wet product during the drying process when necessary thanks to an advanced pipework design within the chamber.

The hanging shelf design also contributes to the enhanced drying allowing the heat to flow within the chamber and provides a high quality cleaning process with CIP system that can achieve 2.5ppm to non-detectable result.

For compact design requirements, the CakeStand tray dryer can be supplied with a pivot door that reduces the footprint of the equipment. Along with an optimum tray size, this door design ensures less opportunity for overreaching or accidental spillage.

As an original pioneer of high containment solutions, PSL can integrate the CakeStand tray dryer within a dedicated glovebox or multi-purpose isolator achieving proven nano-containment for highly potent, cytotoxic, antibody drug conjugates and oncological products. The CakeStand tray dryer design itself also avoids any hidden pockets or non-accessible gaps which can make the cleaning procedure problematic.

12 shelves CakeStand tray dryer

12 shelves CakeStand tray dryer

The CakeStand tray dryers range starts from benchtop compact solutions for process development, up to 12 shelves freestanding units for large scale vacuum drying. Available standard construction materials include 316L stainless steel and Alloy C22 (ASME and U-Stamp possible) and design temperatures range from 0° to 150°C. Instrumentation such as temperature probe or pressure or full control are available along with TCU and vacuum pump packages to meet any requirements.

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