What is freeze drying in pharmaceutical industry?

Freeze drying is a technique used by pharmaceutical manufacturers to derive dry product from aqueous solutions. Originally developed during the 1940s, the technique produces a dry product which can be readily reconstituted to its original form by adding water when required.

What type of drugs need freeze drying process?

Commonly freeze-dried products include antibiotics, bacteria, vaccines, protein-containing products, cells and tissues, and chemicals. Once freeze-dried, these will be preserved in a permanently storable state that can be reconstituted easily by adding water.

Can you freeze dry medication?

Freeze drying pharmaceuticals uses a process called lyophilization to lower the temperature of the product to below freezing, and then a high-pressure vacuum is applied to extract the water in the form of vapour. The vapour collects on a condenser, turns back to ice and is removed.

Is freeze drying a continuous process?

For more than 80 years, pharmaceutical freeze-drying has been performed using an unchanged batch-wise approach, although the handling equipment before (filling) and after (capping and packaging) freeze-drying is continuously operated by nature.

What is the principle of freeze drying?

The essence of the freeze-drying process depends on maintaining a critical balance between the conversion of ice into water vapor by sublimation under vacuum and the removal of that vapor from the frozen mass. To maintain sublimation, heat energy is applied to the product to compensate for sublimation cooling.

What is the freeze drying process?

What is freeze drying? Freeze Drying is a process in which a completely frozen sample is placed under a vacuum in order to remove water or other solvents from the sample, allowing the ice to change directly from a solid to a vapor without passing through a liquid phase.

Who invented freeze drying?

Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval
Freeze-drying was invented by Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval at the College de France in Paris in 1906. Later, during World War II, it was widely implemented to preserve blood serum. Since then freeze-drying has become one of the most important processes for preservation of heat-sensitive biological materials.

What is lyophilization PDF?

In this article lyophilization is defined as a stabilizing process in which the substance is first frozen and then the quantity of the solvent is reduced first by sublimation (primary drying) and then by desorption (secondary drying) to values that will no longer support biological growth or chemical reactions.

What is the difference between pharmaceutical and home freeze dryer?

What’s the Difference Between Home Freeze-Dryers and Pharmaceutical Freeze-Dryers? Home freeze dryers are smaller, slightly louder, and have a smaller temperature range than the larger pharmaceutical models. However, home units also cost a fraction of what pharmaceutical models cost.

Did NASA invent freeze drying?

In planning for the long duration Apollo missions, NASA conducted extensive research into space food. One of the techniques developed was freeze drying. Action Products commercialized this technique, concentrating on snack food including the first freeze-dried ice cream.