Case Study Details

Client Name

Pharmaceutical Manufacturer

Application

Tablet coating

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Challenge

A major pharmaceutical manufacturer was experiencing short cartridge life from the exhaust of a Thomas Engineering continuous tablet coater. The collector on the tablet coater is a competitor's model, a 16 cartridge unit. This is a very tough application due to the high humidity and sticky dust that is generated.

The average life cycle of the competitor's cartridge was only 11 batches of product, at which time the cartridges where completely blinded and had to be changed out. Each tablet coater can do 3 batches per day, so they were changing out cartridges every 3 to 4 days.

Tablet Coater

Competitor Pleats

Competitor Pleats

HemiPleat after 39 batches

Solution

A new set of HemiPleat® cartridges where installed in the collector. The first test of the HemiPleat cartridges proved to be a huge success. The cartridges lasted for 42 batches or almost 4 times as long as the competitor's cartridge. After this initial test, the customer switched all of the tablet coater dust collector cartridges to HemiPleat.

The HemiPleat has saved substantial money in replacement cartridges, labor, and disposal cost. It has also saved in energy costs on the dust collector fan motors with variable frequency drives. The lower average pressure drop allows the fans to run slower while maintaining airflow at the tablet coater.