Pharmaceuticals

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CHALLENGES IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Water treatment in the pharmaceutical industry is becoming more and more challenging. Stringent rules and regulation require advanced water treatment technologies. 

For pharmaceutical application, this applies to both process- and wastewater treatment.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

APPLICATIONS

We offer a range of different ultrafiltration (UF) technolgies that are perfectly suited for the pretreatment phase in the process of making Purified Water (PW), Highly Purified Water (HPW) or Water For Injection (WFI). X-Flow hollow-fiber UF membranes address total suspended solids, turbidity, bacteria and viruses. The well-known X-Flow technologies Xiga and Aquaflex are the industry standard for pretreatment reverse osmosis (RO).

Our hollow-fiber UF membrane modules are available in two configurations:

  • Xiga: with multiple elements (up to four) installed in horizontally position
  • Aquaflex: with single elements mounted vertically
  • Alternatively, we offer the X-line: a pre-engineered, highly flexible UF technology including end caps with integrated headers

Process water treatment
Process water in the pharmaceutical industry is divided into three different grades, with the lowest grade water being purified water (PW), the next is highly purified water (HPW) and water for injection (WFI) is the highest grade.

The production of these high-quality water streams is described in three stages: inlet, pretreatment and final treatment.  A wide range of different technologies is used in this process, including ultrafiltration, softening, ion exchange, reverse osmosis (RO) and distillation.

Wastewater treatment
Wastewater in the pharmaceutical industry is a growing concern. Addressing the pollution caused organic chemicals is becoming increasingly challenging. This is due to the wide variety of organic chemicals used, which results in a large variety of wastewater compositions. Where treatment of waste streams often includes biological technologies, conventional methods barely address the chemical compounds in the water due to their increasing resistance to biological degradation. Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) technologies are opening up many opportunities for the effective treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater.

TREATMENT SOLUTIONS

The X-Flow technologies are designed for optimal performance in MBR configurations, which use membranes for separation of water from the active biomass and therefore create an excellent water quality for re-use. The wastewater technologies series are available for different qualities of wastewater.

All result in a robust solution for high and constant effluent quality directly suitable for reuse. 

RELATED TECHNOLOGIES

AIRLIFT

Pentair X-Flow Airlift Solution: treating low and medium strength wastewater and producing high-quality filtrate in bioreactor applications.

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CROSSFLOW MBR

Pentair X-Flow Crossflow MBR Solution: treating high strength wastewater and producing high-quality filtrate in wastewater treatment applications.

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X-LINE

Pentair X-Flow X-line Solution is a cost-effective ready-to-assemble UF for water treatment and wastewater reuse applications.

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AQUAFLEX

Pentair X-Flow Aquaflex is the ultrafiltration solution for challenging feed water qualities with unmatched operational flexibility.

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XIGA

Pentair X-Flow Xiga: Ideal solution for large-scale ultrafiltration applications in a small footprint.

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