Precise hydrogen peroxide dosage in chemical disinfection

Errors caused by incorrect dosing, a defective pump or a faulty concentration sensor can prevent the required degree of inactivation from being achieved. Troubleshooting is time-consuming and complex. Moreover, the disinfection process has to be repeated. This costs time and money.

To ensure the required degree of inactivation, operators often deliberately dose more hydrogen peroxide than is absolutely necessary. This is because some of the H₂O₂ droplets are blown directly into the chamber by the air flow and do not reach the evaporator unit. However, this overdosing increases the costs of ownership.

The processes used to manufacture pharmaceutical products need to be quick and efficient. However, to reduce the disinfection time of conventional systems, they would have to be on a much larger scale. This leads to increased procurement costs, space requirements and costs for energy, hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and air.

The evaporator unit and the peristaltic pump have a limited capacity. In other words, the conventional solution described above requires different components to suit differently dimensioned autoclaves and their performance. This makes procurement, logistics, production and warehousing extremely complex.

If the disinfection unit consists of many individual parts, logistics and production become considerably more complex. Furthermore, the components must be synchronised before start-up to achieve the desired disinfection result. This adds to the time required for production and start-up.

In contrast to the inflexible peristaltic pump, the compact Bürkert solution allows more aerosol to be dosed into the chamber in the same period of time. As a result, the time it takes to reach the degree of inactivation is reduced. This speeds up the disinfection process. A conventional solution would require a larger plant that is much more expensive to operate.

Inside the mixing nozzle, the high speed and twisting force of the air flow break down the low liquid flow of H2O2 into an aerosol. The heating unit required for evaporation in conventional solutions is no longer necessary. This helps to reduce electricity consumption. The Bürkert solution also requires less compressed air, as the air is already accelerated to sound velocity through the small annular gap of the nozzle. The disinfection process using the Bürkert system solution therefore reduces the required amount of hydrogen peroxide, compressed air and electricity.

The Bürkert system solution enables flexible dosing operations because both the LFC and the MFC can be used to flexibly adjust dosing quantities – even on the fly. All this makes the Bürkert system solution easily scalable for differently sized devices. It also enables space-saving machine designs thanks to its compact components and short pipelines.

A complete system solution is easier to integrate into a machine than single components because the system solution components are already matched to one another. The compact unit can be installed either in steel cabinets or on panels, thus saving valuable space.