Achema

With the new generation of pharma separators shown at ACHEMA for the first time, GEA enables pharma customers to meet market changes more flexibly. 

Thanks to the innovative GEA flexChange concept, the separator’s bowls can be easily and fast exchanged. The new GEA portfolio offers three different bowl types which are specially designed for processes such as insulin, proteins, mammalian cells and vaccines: two self-cleaning design versions as well as the new infinitely adjustable nozzle bowl GEA flexicon.

This new nozzle design - GEA flexicon - allows to flexibly adjust the parameters even during production of back pressure adjustment in the clarified liquid discharge line. Pharmaceutical plants are therefore enabled to manufacture about 150 different applications with just a single machine. 

All separators with the new GEA flecChange concept are designed in accordance with ASME BPE 2014 standards. Steam sterilizable designs are also available for all three bowl types.

GEA pharma separator with new GEA flexChange concept:

• Allows customers to flexibly adapt to changing product requirements
• Three exchangeable bowl types available: two self-cleaning versions and one nozzle bowl design
• New GEA flexicon nozzle: flexibly controllable by means of pressure, suitable for about 150 applications without technical adaptation 
• Integrated directdrive, energy efficient, space saving, low maintenance
• Designed in accordance with ASME BPE 2014
• Steam sterilizable designs are available for all three bowl types.

Always looking to improve the research, development and scale-up process for oral solid dosage forms, we’re currently working on a compaction data acquisition and analysis system (CDAAS). Comprising mechanical components (feeders, hoppers, and tooling), electrical elements and a software package, the CDAAS makes it possible to do formulation development work on a production-scale tablet press using minute amounts of product.

With this new kit, less than a kilogram of product is more than enough to proceed with the fundamental characterization of the compression process on a commercial-scale rotary tablet press. Test sequences can be generated with multiple runs to optimize the press parameters. Loaded into the GEA MC5 control system as a single recipe, the machine will modify the variable parameters for each run according to the recipe-defined values and produce a specific number of tablets.

So, with very little product, several tests can be done before producing a clinical batch with a well-defined set of parameters. Plus, as the clinical or pilot batch is produced on the same machine under equivalent conditions, there are no scale-up issues.

Offering an improved design but maintaining the same compact footprint, the MM-100 spray dryer from GEA, equipped with the new and highly efficient cyclone CEE (Cyclone Extra Efficiency), is the newest addition to the MOBILE MINOR™ 

The newly developed cyclone CEE offers a higher separation efficiency, which increases the yield and reduces emission. In real life tests, the CEE powder separation efficiency was verified as being considerably higher than the efficiency of standard cyclones. All comparisons were made with the same pressure loss over the units. The efficiency was tested for a range of particle sizes, air flows and powder loadings and superior performance was verified for all combinations.

Installed in almost 2400 plants worldwide, the cross-application MOBILE MINOR™ spray dryer is robust, reliable and versatile. It is easy to use, clean and move and an ideal basis for up-scaling a new process.

Further special features of the MOBILE MINOR™:

• Process gas flow up to 100 kg/h at 200 °C for increased capacity
• Accurate gas disperser for minimizing powder deposits
• High capacity HEPA filters for baby food or hazardous chemical applications available
• Powder collection glasses in sizes from 250–3500 mL can be supplied as standard.
• The universal gas disperser for the rotary atomizer as well as the two-fluid nozzle can easily be exchanged with an optional low velocity gas disperser — which has a similar flow pattern to the DPH gas dispersers used in larger PHARMASD™ spray dryers — for nozzle atomization.
• Powerful supply blower with flow indication
• Easy to remove and clean laser-cut gas guides (patent pending).

GEA provides high-performance equipment and sophisticated, customized solutions designed to meet the most stringent efficiency, safety and environmental requirements for a wide range of highly specialized upstream, midstream and downstream applications in oil & gas and chemical industry. Our process refrigeration and gas compression capabilities include process cooling; tank/storage cooling; chillers; compressor packages; and natural gas processing systems. With more than 600 project references around the world, GEA has built a solid reputation in providing cooling and refrigeration solutions utilizing screw, reciprocating and centrifugal compressor technologies.

GEA features and advantages:

• Gas processing & dew point control, cooling of process fluid storage (boil-off gas systems), utility cooling (water and glycol chillers), exothermic reaction cooling systems;
• Applications utilizing a complete set of refrigerants: hydrocarbons, mixed refrigerant, ammonia, and freon;
• Designs in accordance with customer’s specifications;
• Expertise in technology implementation;
• Solutions for reduced utilities consumption;
• Lower maintenance requirements;
• Fulfilling the highest international standards and H&S directives.

GEA provides the complete centrifugal separation process in the downstream of the fermenter, starting with accepting and temperature control of the freshly produced fermentation broth, separation of the biomass from MSG solution by means of disk-stack clarifiers, acidification and once again temperature control of the pre-concentrated biomass and finally biomass thickening with decanters.

The process-setup for the production of lysine slightly differs from MSG production. For lysine an additional ion exchange column is needed prior to the evaporation stage.

GEA separation experts have developed a new process with centrifugal separators and decanters instead of horizontal plate filters. Centrifuges use speed instead of space. For example: a clarifier type FSE 300 can easily process 20 – 23 m3/h of fermentation broth and has a footprint of only 3 m2.

Another advantage of using centrifuges is the completely closed process. Feed, processing and discharge of the broth take place in a closed and fully-automatic system, any open or manual handling of the product is no longer necessary. Thus, the use of centrifuges meets the highest hygienic standards that apply especially for the food industry processes. On top, our centrifuges are CIP capable. 

The biggest advantage that comes with our centrifuges though is the fact that they do not need any filter aids. This has the nice side effect that the concentrated biomass is not contaminated. So you can make a valuable product out of it instead of having to discard it. 

Glycerin is a by-product of biodiesel production and amounts to around 10 percent of the overall output of the plants. As market prices for biodiesel have decreased over the past years, producers are looking for other ways to improve their plant profitability. This is why GEA has developed a new process to improve both glycerin yield and quality, e.g. for the use in HPC products.

Depending on the individual biodiesel production process the glycerin contains different kinds and amounts of salts. Those salts have to be removed to minimize product losses in the refining stage. GEA uses special decanters for this stage that can handle product temperatures of up to 160 °C.

For manufacturers looking to achieve paramount performances when processing pharma and cosmetic nano-emulsions (700-1500 bar), the GEA NiSoX-Valve offers the perfect solution. 

Notable advantages are obtained by the NiSoX-Valve on the product: 

• Better particle distribution on product
• Improved physical properties and appearance
  • Rheological behaviour (viscosity)
  • Transparency 
  • Colours 

The NisoX-Valve also offers important operational benefits:

• Ecofriendly - Less energy consumption 
• Longer lifetime of components
• Easy and quick maintenance
• State-of-the-art cleanibility and sterilization performance
• Configurable for optimized performance
• Available for the complete GEA homogenizer range, from lab units to industrial scale

GEA Hilge NOVALOBE 60 is a robust rotary lobe pump for high viscous media. 

Typical fields of application in Pharmaceutical or Biotech Industry are fermentation processes, vaccine, blood products or enzyme production. This rotary lobe pump offers high surface quality and large flexibility for hygienic operations and has the following advantages:

• Gentle pumping and dosing with 2,1 l/rev 
• For high viscous media up to 1.000.000 mPas
• Unique rotor mounting design and flexible rotor types
• Hygienic design in accordance with EHEDG
• High reliability in operation & service 
• Easy to maintain 

 As the GEA Hilge HYGIA centrifugal pump, is part of the GEA VARIPUMP range it is optimized primarily for advanced applications and provides unrivalled flexibility for the customers.

Especially on sensitive applications in pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries the GEA Hilge HYGIA pump range has built up high standards.

The pump is designed to fulfill maximum hygienic and aseptic requirements and is able to pump water and other fluids at sanitized quality (e.g. PW, HPW, WFI).

The GEA Hilge HYGIA can offer the following features and advantages:

• Complies with the highest hygiene standards, such as EHEDG and 3-A Sanitary Standard
  • Secured production and optimised cleanability 
• Design approved for many years, pump casing made of rolled stainless steel with high plate thickness
  • Long-living, robust
• Pump design based on modules, executions, seals, connection types and sizes, etc. can be individual combined
  • High flexibility and customization
• Various impeller types and connection sizes individually adjusted
  • Made for the requested duty point with low NPSH and high efficiency
• Several different seal systems, variable speed drive via integrated or external frequency converter
  • Optimised adaption on the application
• Wide performance range covered by only two pump sizes
  • Small amount on different spare parts
• Clamp ring at pump casing to open the pump easy and fast, front loading mechanical seal, Adapta design for easy motor change
  • Service friendly and simple maintenance
• Fully drainable in vertical execution or through drain valve
• Wet end parts can be delivered without any casted materials 
  • 100% free of blow-holes
• Three variants for system pressure ranges: 16 bar / 25 bar / 64 bar*

• The GEA MODUL™ Q features GEA’s Exchangeable Compression Module (ECM), which offers higher levels of containment performance. 
• The press also incorporates an Exchangeable Die Disc. 
• With a bigger pitch diameter and the use of A-type tooling, the MODUL™ Q can accommodate 51 punch stations and produce more than 367,200 tablets per hour. 
• Single and bilayer tableting, 
• Adjustable dwell time control at pre and main compression and OEE monitoring
• new MULTI-CONTROL 5 control system.

• The unit will accommodate from two to six GEA compact feeders for which a variety of different top-up systems can be selected depending on the product and capacity required
• Both GEA’s linear blending technology and vertical CMT blending technology can be installed in the system 
• A second linear blender can be added to facilitate the addition of lubricant or external phase ingredients
• The nominal mass flow capacity ranges from 10 to 50 kg/h 
• A PAT system can be added for blend uniformity measurement, to support DoE work and RTD measurements.

GEA’s process expertise is based on a long history of innovation, applied R&D and industry experience. And, as a long-term partner to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, our equipment stands for high performance, quality, and reliable, trouble-free operation. Every GEA freeze dryer is designed to help our customers to create a product that will succeed in the market — with GEA being a partner in reaching that goal.

We offer a complete program of high-quality products associated with all aspects of aseptic manufacturing and integrated solutions, in addition to efficient service for the pharmaceutical, healthcare and biotech industries. On display at Achema: 

• LYOSPARK™ controlled nucleation technology facilitates uniform ice crystal formation in laboratory and production-scale freeze dryers with a minimum degree of supercooling. Ensures inter-batch homogeneity, improves process repeatability and enhances both the presentation and quality of the final product.
• For online moisture control, our LYOSENSE™ sensor uses multipoint NIR measurements to comprehensively and non-destructively evaluate freeze-dried product cakes in real-time. Customer benefits include; whole cake assessment; fast processing times (5 ms); and a simple operator interface.
• 100% vial traceability is becoming an increasingly important consideration in the pharmaceutical freeze-drying industry. LYODATA™ provides unique marking, clear identification and the consistent traceability of primary pharmaceutical packaging, making drug counterfeiting practically impossible.

Since its market launch one year ago, this skid-mounted separator has been implemented in pharmaceutical test centers and pilot plants around the world for the development of new products. There are good reasons for this: the module was specially designed for this use in accordance with GMP guidelines and has almost all functions of large pharmaceutical GEA centrifuges. This allows for an easy and reliable upscaling to any desired production size. Thanks to its compact construction and plug & play concept including all pre-installed connections and control modules, the skid can be integrated quickly into a test centers while also saving space. The GEA pathfinder GMP also masters the most difficult tasks extremely reliably.

 Three separator bowl sizes for highly customized solutions 

GEA pathfinder offers a selection of three bowl sizes for the separator with throughput capacities of 15 l/h to 300 l/h. Together with a g-force of up to 20,000, which is unique worldwide, the skids allow highly efficient plant operation by separating extremely fine particles with minimal differences in density. The customer can focus on creative development and continuous production of his products in an efficient compact system. 

GEA pathfinder GMP at a glance

• Complete functionality of large pharmaceutical centrifuges
• Cost-effective, compact, time-saving, straightforward
• Production results that can be scaled-up  without no problem
• Inclusive package of GMP basic certificates
• 20,000 g for reliably separation of the finest particles even with slight density differences•
• Three bowl sizes for a flow rate of 15 l/h – 300 l/h.

Hundreds of spray dryers sold to the Pharmaceutical industry give us a unique experience and expertise in spray drying pharmaceutical products. GEA’s position worldwide gained from many thousand installations in R&D, dairy, food, pharma, flavors, polymers, chemicals, etc. is built on eight decades of experience. The world’s largest Spray Drying Technology Center includes GMP as well as non-GMP facilities offering full range of spray drying process development and GMP contract manufacturing. It includes Feasibility Studies, Process Development, Scale-up and Manufacturing under cGMP conditions. The GEA Spray Drying Technology Center allow you to go quickly and efficiently from the early stages of product development, where only a few grams of product are available, to the final phases of process refinement and commercial production. The Pharmaceutical GMP Spray Drying Facility is available for production of materials for stability and safety/toxicology studies, clinical trial materials and commercial powders. 

Our expertise and test facility offers covers

• More than 35 different pilot plants 
• Over 15,000 test reports documenting previous tests performed
• Access to a large number of leading spray drying experts on site
• The Pharmaceutical GMP Spray Drying Facility is approved by the Danish Medicines Agency according to European Medicines Agency (EMA) regulations
• Meets EU requirements for production (spray drying) of Investigational Medicinal Products (IMP) and Human Medicinal Products (commercial)
• GMP suites designed for class D / 100 000, ISO 8

Offering a full range of batch and continuous manufacturing technologies for the testing, development and optimization of oral solid dosage forms and with a total footprint of 1100 m², including 200 m² of technical space, the GPSC epitomizes the state-of-the-art in oral solid dosage (OSD) form testing, development and optimization, and offers a full range of batch and continuous manufacturing technologies.

GEA combines advanced in-house technology with a thorough understanding of the processing industries to help customers maximize their development results, gain more know-how and discover additional opportunities for their applications.

The GPSC offers

• customer demonstrations and trials on our batch and continuous equipment
• training sessions and classes
• hands-on laboratory experience
• pharmaceutical product development assistance
• CQA evaluation support
• testing of new concepts (equipment and advanced controls)
• scale-up from laboratory to production (1:10)
• process development/refinement to increase the understanding and capability of GEA equipment

Working with GEA Service means partnering with a dedicated team of service experts. We build, maintain and improve our customers’ equipment, process lines and production plants so that every changing requirement is met, and every aspect of their production processes is optimized. Our customers can feel confident that their processing and manufacturing infrastructure will work to help ensure their continued business success throughout the entire life cycle.

• Getting you started ‒ Beginning of Life Services with seamless support for instant productivity and performance
• Keeping it running ‒ Lifetime Services with the cost-efficient way of ensuring safety and reliability
• Constantly improving ‒ Extended Life Services by sharing our knowledge to safeguard our customers’ investment
• Together with you ‒ Consulting & Enhanced Operations by enduring commitment to our customers and their business

Our seamless service offerings will ensure that our customers can meet the ever-changing demands of their global consumers and markets, not just today, but tomorrow and in the future.

Processes in the chemical industry are often high corrosive and need materials, which are strongly resistant. In the past only porcelain was the material of choice but there was a considerably high risk of damage. In cooperation with SGL, a major producer of carbon-based products, GEA has developed a new ejector body made of graphite to replace the former ceramic ejectors without any modifications on the existing installations. Optimization of vacuum systems used in highly corrosive processes. 

For the retrofitting of complete vacuum systems equipped with porcelain ejectors, we offer a complete service package from the inspection of the vacuum unit, determination of the performance data, and engineering and execution of the revamp.

Your advantages at a glance

• Very accurate dimensions vs porcelain
• Higher mechanical resistance
• Standard sizes for the body and customized sizes for internals, result in energy savings of more than 30 %
• Reduced manufacturing costs
• Reduced lead time (supplier keeps roughly machined objects on stock, impregnated)

Specifically designed to enhance communication and provide real-time connectivity, the GEA Remote Eye Wear offers instant on-the-job support and troubleshooting tips from industry experts. From remote machine assessments, inspections and updates to SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) assistance, this cutting-edge technology can reduce response times, save on travel costs and foster improved supplier-partner relationships.

Your operational advantages

From unexpected downtime to replacing damaged parts, and from identifying upgrade opportunities to equipment optimization, the GEA Remote Eye Wear provides an array of benefi ts. With manufacturers under increasing pressure to hit deadlines and get product to market, it can maximize production time, reduce operational costs, help to deliver quality products and, in the case of incidents or accidents, ensure the health and safety of your staff.

With GEA PerformancePlus we are taking one step further to a higher level focusing on your challenges: innovative, value added service level options that extend beyond routine preventive maintenance. By combining modern condition monitoring technologies with our world-leading industry expertise, we can deliver monitoring, analyzing and optimization services that address the different and varied challenges you face to achieve your performance-related goals. And of course, every GEA PerformancePlus Service Level Agreement will meet the most stringent health and safety, compliance and risk minimization requirements.