Safe Powder Handling: Eliminate Unpredictable Spills

The ultimate challenge
In the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, most of the raw ingredients and final products are handled in powder form. The accurate handling of the nano-scale high-potency Active Pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) became challenging especially because of their very small particles that have a tendency to accumulate and agglomerate. Therefore, effective and safe management and control of powder handling is crucial in the product value chain.

One of challenges of powder handling is accurately dispensing bags or drums.

The standard filling systems fail to reach a constant filling target and lead to a lot of manual rework. Automatic monitoring of feed and spill usually provides accurate results for liquids, but with powders, it is less accurate. This leads to unstable feed rates and unpredictable spills.

The solution
The solution is to use a system that enables fast acquisition, transfer and analysis of the weighing signal. Once a scale has reached a predefined target, it takes 20 milliseconds for the valve to receive a signal and start dispensing. The advantage of this weighing system is real-time management of spills, accurate and repeatable hitting of targets and high production rates.

Hazardous environments
Another challenge in the powder handling process is related to properties of some powders that create a potentially explosive hazardous atmosphere. The handling of such powders requires the use of specially designed equipment. Intristic safe weighing terminals IND560 and IND780 provide advantageous functionality and safe operation in hazardous areas. Weighing terminals have global approvals for hazardous areas like ATEX, FM, IECEx. This means no more trade-offs between safety and productivity.