So, the doctor asks the patient, “What’s wrong?” The patient replies, “You’re the doctor— you tell me.” The doctor would wish for a bit more collaboration. It is also important to collaborate with the analytical chemist when chromatographic separation and analysis are performed.
There is a satirical Kingston Trio song from the 60s called the Merry Minuet that ends with the lyric, “What nature doesn’t do to us, will be done by our fellow man.” That seems to be the case with MTBE.
Industrial vacuum cleaners are critical in maintaining the purity of “clean” environments like pharmaceutical cleanrooms and gowning areas. In these and other controlled areas, specialized vacuums collect—and ideally retain— dust, powders, and other contaminants.
A method was developed to measure hydrocarbons to 1 part-per-trillion (ppt) concentration levels with a gas chromatograph and flame ionization detector (GC/FID). This method was used to measure purifier siloxane removal efficiencies from air under both dry and humid conditions.
Our company currently manufactures in a controlled environment but not a cleanroom environment. What improvements can we make to increase our level of contamination control?
In the context of contamination control, we concentrate on chromatography for separation and identification; chromatography can also be used to purify product.
In the January column, we described exposure limits and the scientific methodology long-used to set them. In this column, we’ll cover who does this work, how it should be used, and some ideas gaining credence.
Let us take a closer look at the way the cleanroom environment is monitored to verify the existence or nonexistence of particles both viable and non-viable.
The introduction of new materials and the increasing challenges of reduced line widths have generated considerable interest in the area of post-CMP cleaning technology.
AMC is chemical contamination in the form of vapors or aerosols that can be organic or inorganic in nature and includes acids, bases, polymer additives, organometallic compounds, and dopants. These chemical vapors can come from many different sources.
In light of a difficult financial climate, now is an important time for many manufacturers to revisit prior facility maintenance and upgrade projects to ensure the company’s bottom line has not been adversely impacted by problems that have gone unchecked or installations performed in haste during peak production periods.
Industrial sterilization and contamination control are critical in medical device manufacturing. This article reviews sterilization standards, FDA requirements, and critical factors in controlled environments.
Fan filter unit (FFU) implementation continues to be the preferred solution for new cleanroom installations both large and small. Communication and control of these FFU systems have been confined solely to the large system installations, leaving the small rooms to continue using manual set-and-forget FFUs.
The primary objective of a cleanroom disinfectant program is to control contamination in the production environment so that safe, pure, and effective drugs can be manufactured.
Ultrapure water is a critical fluid in the front end of line (FEOL) wet cleaning process. The ultra pure water (UPW) used for dilute chemical blending and post chemistry rinse must meet stringent requirements to control yield-diminishing contaminants on the wafer surface.
In the November column, I described regulatory approaches used worldwide to reduce smog formation by minimizing intrusion into the earth’s troposphere of one of the reactants from which smog is produced. The reactant is called a VOC (Volatile Organic Carbon).
An effective cleanroom garment program is a vital component of any successful cleanroom operation, but it can often seem like a necessary evil; an expense item that seems to be forever trending upwards over budget.
A components manufacturer adopts a new, safe, water-based process. No hazardous ingredients are indicated on the MSDS, the product comes with environmentally-related certifications, the chemistry is approves and the requisite qualification and acceptance testing has been performed. Why are some employees complaining of skin irritation?
