The process of separating purified water from impurities by heating until it changes into vapour and then cooling the vapour to condensate it into water for injection.

Pharmaceutical distiller

The pharmaceutical distiller chemically and microbiologically purifies water by phase change and entrainment separation. In this process, water is evaporated producing steam. The steam disengages from the water leaving behind dissolved solids, nonvolatiles, and high molecular weight impurities. However, low molecular weight impurities can be carried with water mist/droplets, which are entrained in steam. A separator removes fine mist and entrained impurities, including endotoxins. The purified steam is condensed into water for injection. Distillation systems are available to provide a minimum of 3 log10 reduction in contaminants such as microorganisms and endotoxins.

Three designs are available including single effect (SE), multi-effect (MED) and vapour compression (VCD).

• In a multi effect still, purified steam produced in each effect is used to heat water and generate more steam in each subsequent effect.
• In a vapour compression still, steam generated by the evaporation of feedwater is compressed and subsequently condensed to form distillate.

All distillation units are susceptible to scaling and corrosion. VCD stills require water softening for removing calcium and magnesium as minimum. MED stills require higher water quality. Ion exchange or reverse osmosis or reverse osmosis + continuous electro-deionisation units are usually used as pretreament. Stills are sensitive to chlorine and should be protected with activated carbon or sodium bisulfate injection.

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