Archive for May, 2014

Environmental Chambers-Introduction

May 6th, 2014

Environmental chambers are the scientific equipments that perform scientific testing of a product/biological items, industrial products, materials, electronic devices and components under specified environmental conditions or the variety of stresses. Environmental chambers also accelerate the effect of exposure to the environment on the products, sometimes at conditions not actually expected. These conditions include:

  • Temperature variation
  • Relative Humidity
  • Salt spray
  • Rain
  • Weathering
  • Vacuum
  • Electromagnetic radiation
  • Electro-dynamic vibrations

Environment chambers can range from walk-in type used for the storage of temperature sensitive pharmaceuticals, to large drive-in chambers used in testing automobiles. These systems can be supplied with temperature and humidity PID controls or with fully computerized data acquisition and control systems. Environmental chambers use forced convection heating for optimum temperature distribution and sophisticated controllers ensure minimum overshoot and excellent set-point stability.

Applications of these Chambers include:

  • Ambient storage chambers for the aerospace industry
  • Energy efficiency testing chambers
  • Curing rooms (Concrete, moisture)
  • Storage Rooms (photograph, film and polymer)
  • Machine testing enclosures
  • Electronic burn-in testing
  • Roll-in bottle incubation chambers
  • Industrial dry rooms and dry chambers
  • Entomology rearing rooms and chambers

Advantages of Environmental Chambers

  • Environmental testing by environmental chambers allows an organization to design and products that are more reliable and safer for their intended end use.
  • Environmental chambers prevent need to re- work materials due to humidity fluctuations in chamber.
  • These chambers are environmentally safe, requiring no refrigerants or freons.
  • Silent operation.
  • Easy to install, requiring minimal maintenance.

Environmental Chamber Types

May 5th, 2014

Environmental chamber– it is a safe place for testing everything (biological products to electronic products) from heat to vibration and stress or creates an environment for testing variables. Environmental chamber comes in various shapes, sizes and types. The most common type of environmental chamber is for thermal testing (heating as well as cooling qualities); thermal shock chambers. Environmental chambers customary use is for testing parts; some environmental chambers are used to grow cultures or specialized crops without outside influence.

Environmental chambers are suitable for carrying out different quality control tests under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Vibration analysis, moisture absorption and stress testing are also common functions of environmental chambers. One of the major advantages of environmental chamber is that the environmental testing allows organization to design and produce products that are more reliable and safer for their intended end use.

The environmental testing industry offers many types of test chambers ranging from small benchtop style chambers to chambers as large as a room. The test application and product loading requirements will primarily determine the type of chamber needed.

  • Benchtop Chambers; these chambers are the smallest size of environmental test chamber typically ranging from 0.5 cubic feet to 5.5 cubic feet. This is fine for many commercial and industrial tests that require low temperatures of typically 0°C, -10°C or -25°C.Benchtop chambers are ideal for testing smaller products such as computer components, automobile sensors or cellular phones, these chambers combine superior performance with compact design that is perfect for research and development or personal point-of-use testing. These chambers can be mounted in an instrument rack or will easily sit on a laboratory benchtop.
  • Upright or Reach-in Chambers; also known as Upright Chambers. Upright or Reach-in chambers can range from 4 to 70 cubic feet or larger and are able to stimulate almost any environment. Temperature, humidity, altitude, rain, solar and vibration are just some of the environments that can be produced by an upright or rich-in chamber. Reach-in environmental chambers provide a flexibility chambers provide a flexibility and economy of space that full sized rooms are unable to offer. By lining the walls of a room with reach-in chambers, researchers can maintain multiple environments, each with their own temperature, humidity and lighting levels, while maximizing the available space.
  • Walk-in Chambers; walk-in chambers are environmentally conditioned rooms ranging in size from those big enough to step into or those large enough to drive into. They can be used to test large components, assemblies and finished products, from computers and copiers to automobiles and satellites throughout a wide range of temperature and humidity environments. Walk-in can also be used as a laboratory environment for conducting test procedure in food processing, pharmaceutical and scientific applications. They offer temperature and humidity simulation capabilities for climatic testing and temperature/humidity cycling whenever there is a need to simulate wide temperature and humidity extremes. They can be made almost any length, width or height.
  • Thermal shock Chambers;The most common type of environmental chamber is for thermal testing (heating as well as cooling qualities); thermal shock chambers. Thermal shock chambers have the ability to shock a product by moving it from a high temperature to a low temperature. With two or three separately controlled temperature zones between which products are automatically transferred, they thermally shock and stress a product quickly, exposing its reliability in the process. These chambers are available in different sizes and configurations depending on testing requirements.

Dry Heat Sterilizer-Batch sterilizer

May 3rd, 2014

Sterilization is a process that effectively kills or eliminates transmissible agents or microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, viruses and prions from a surface, equipment, foods, medications, or biological culture medium. In the laboratories, the sterility is acquired by exposure of the object that is needed to be sterilized, to chemical or physical agent for a specified time. Some of the wide ranges of agents used as steriliants are:

  • elevated temperature,
  • ionizing radiation,
  • Chemical liquids or gases etc.

The success of the process of sterilization depends upon the choice of the method adopted for sterilization like in case of heat it can either be moist heat sterilization or dry heat sterilization.

Dry heat destroys bacterial endotoxins/pyrogens which are difficult to eliminate by other means and this property makes it applicable for sterilizing glass bottles which are to be filled aseptically and it can only be used for thermo stable, moisture sensitive or moisture impermeable pharmaceutical and medicinal.

These include products like; Dry powdered drugs, Suspensions of drug in non aqueous solvents, Oils, fats waxes, soft hard paraffin silicone, Oily injections, implants, ophthalmic ointments and ointment bases etc.

Reasons why dry heat sterilization is important;

  • the need to sterilize small objects, particularly syringes, and
  • the apparatus required is comparatively inexpensive when compared with the autoclave.

Batch sterilizer; is one of the appropriate technique for the dry sterilization as it enables proper mixing cum perfect sterilization of the product and the Vacuum inside the chamber ensures that the microbiological and organoleptic properties of the product are preserved that is it does not destroys the microbiological properties of the products that can be proteins denaturation.

Batch sterilizer is consists of a conical shaped vessel fully closed jacketed in which material need to be sterilized is loaded. The vessel is then subjected to vacuum and the material is subjected to steam sterilization. At the same time the material is tumbling inside the vessel. This methos provides the proper mixing cum perfect sterilization of the required product.