[Case study]: cleaner air for pharmaceutical drying

Barriquand installed a Platular® to replace a stainless steel fin tube bundle for a leader of the pharmaceutical industry. Objectives: to improve the cleanliness of the application, enhance reliability of the installation and facilitate maintenance.

In this world-famous laboratory; the assembly lines of pharmaceutical products require applications of reheating of clean air with vapor (vapor-air application). This hot clean air can be of use, among other things, to drying products. The reheating was assured, for this customer, by stainless steel fin tube bundle (tubes, fins and casing).

Optimization of the cleanliness of the air
The project consisted in replacing this ageing installation which no longer brought satisfaction to our client, avid to increase the rate of cleanliness of the air within their process but also to simplify their maintenance operations.

Indeed, this type of battery is composed of ultra-thin fins, spaced out by only a few mm which become traps for dust particles. Even when the air is clean, residue still tends to accumulate between the fins, thus clogging the gaps.Furthermore, the conception of the unit makes maintenance difficult.

Cleaning operations, carried out during factory production shutdowns, often have the annoying consequence of simply pushing the dust particles to the heart of the device where they become unreachable.

A fragile installation
The fin tube bundle exploited by our customer, was designed with horizontal tubes which, unfortunately, are not recommended for a vapor application.

Indeed, our expertise in the design/manufacturing of tubular heat exchangers, allowed us to notice that a vapor bundle with vertical tubes allows a better evacuation of condensates and avoids numerous thermal constraints.Finally, these fin tube bundles are fragile installations subject to leaks that are almost impossible to repair.

The Barriquand thermal solution: Traction free, 100% cleanable
Our heat engineers proposed a change of technology to our client by turning to a Platular® heat exchanger, with the guarantee of replacing the existing installation without the congestion but with similar thermal performances.Besides, this new unit contains polished welds which, added to its exclusive design, allows the client to benefit from an installation without any traction points in order to optimize the cleanliness of the air.

Entirely accessible and cleanable (the entry and the exit are visible), Platular® gives our client the possibility of recuperating 100 % of their initial cleanliness thanks to a simple jet cleaning in case, for example, of a filter failure.

Need a thermal solution for a pharmaceutical process? Please contact us!