DCS - Drum Containment System
The containment of products has always been an issue in the pharmaceutical industry. However, because of the continuous increase in the toxicity and reactivity of the products as well as due to the high standards of production quality required in the last decade, containment has become a must.
Containment is necessary as much for the protection of personnel as for the products themselves to prevent contamination.
It is still common practice to protect operators by wearing full safety suits with gas masks or external breathing air. Industries try to move away from such practices as the safety of the operator is not fully guaranteed and work under these conditions is rather difficult and unpleasant. Furthermore, the protection of the product and the environment is still not assured, so that a fully enclosed special production area with complex ventilation and filtration systems is required.
Isolator systems are a possible answer to these inconveniences. The use of glove box isolators is nowadays a common trend. They can protect the operator, the products and the environment all at the same time. However, they usually show low flexibility as they are designed for a given operation and require much space as well as a substantial investment.
Powdery material is still commonly delivered and stored in drums. Discharging a drum with a liner in a contained manner is not a simple operation. The powder is in most cases not free-flowing and the weight of the drums usually exceeds 50 kg, making them difficult to handle. The use of an isolator is not necessarily the best answer to this problem, especially when the powder has to be charged into some equipment with limited surrounding space (e.g. a reactor, dryer, etc).
Dec has developed a DCS - Drum Containment System to be used in combination with their PTS - Powder Transfer System to discharge drums in a fully contained manner and to transfer the powder directly into a process equipment without contamination, keeping the system safe even in the presence of a solvent atmosphere.
