Our Pharmaceutical client at their manufacturing location in Spokane, WA, had a desire to automate a labor intensive step and reduce product loss in the processing of their active ingredient.
The feed flow and the manual operations of a high-shear processing machine were automated in this project. The machine modifications included actuating its valves, adding remote start and stop as well as reworking the hydraulic pressure control to respond to a command signal.
In addition, a hygienic feed pump skid to deliver and meter the fluid was designed and built to ASME BPE 2002. This multifunction feed pump skid included: a variable speed controlled gear-pump, multi-port sanitary diaphragm valves for flexible processing and CIP flushing, a thermal low flow/dry line switch and a mass flow meter.
The skid also contained a PLC panel with an Allen Bradley SLC which controlled all aspects of the batch process. Local and remote mounted Panelview operator interfaces allowed complete control of the automated process by technicians from within the adjacent clean room space.
 |
 |