KNF Flodos pumps help to scale up chemical manufacturing processes

Process chemists at AstraZeneca in Sweden are using the Stepdos® and Liquiport® ranges of liquid pumps from KNF Flodos for the development of their manufacturing processes.

Dr Csaba Urbaniczky, process research and development scientist, explained: "To develop full-scale manufacturing processes, we need to start with a fundamental understanding of the process on a laboratory scale. Pumps are used in pilot plants and in full-scale production, therefore it is useful to be able to simulate this environment in the laboratory."

"It is important to have pumps of the right size for this kind of work, and having good control is much safer too, especially with very exothermic reactions. The Stepdos range offers medium size pumps of 30 or 80 ml/minute, made with Teflon heads - the only pumps of this size with completely inert pumping heads. Both Stepdos pumps are RS-232 compliant, so we can use our software in automated experiments. We also use Liquiport pumps as transfer pumps between larger reactors of 1L to 10L. They are very easy to use, and have Teflon or fluorinated plastic pump heads, so they too are chemically inert."

Dr Urbaniczky concluded: "KNF Flodos pumps give us the control we need over the addition rates and it is a major advantage to be able to mimic a plant in a laboratory environment, with complete control of all the variables."