An assessment of the containment performance of a ventilated enclosure in the pharmaceuticals industry using experimental and predictive techniques

Due to guidelines issued by government health bodies, concerns over personn el safety, and a desire to maintain the quality of manufactured products, c ontainment is becoming increasingly important in a growing number of differ ent industrial contexts. By isolating hazardous materials, a containment sy stem should reduce to acceptably low levels the potential dangers posed to human health and the surrounding environment. During manufacturing processe s, it should also assist in the protection of these materials from outside contamination. In this paper, a ventilated containment booth at a pharmaceuticals plant is analysed. This booth is used to contain active powders whilst they are tip ped into a reactor for drug manufacture. Experimental data regarding the ai r hows within the system is compared with numerical predictions generated u sing computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The agreement is good and the pred ictions highlight the flow dynamics of the system. The use of CFD is then e xtended to provide indicators of containment performance for a range of dif ferent operational characteristics. These indicators, based on the ventilat ion performance of the system, and on the ability of the air flow at the ha tch face to isolate hazardous materials from the working environment, clear ly show the deficiencies associated with the current system. However, they also indicate that certain modifications to the location of the extraction ducting and the rate of air extraction could yield substantial benefits in terms of the overall containment performance of the device.