One of the industries where reverse osmosis plants manufacturers play a major role is the pharmaceutical industry. With its requirement for sterilisation, the pharma industry needs the purified water that RO plants can provide. But the work of RO plants manufacturers goes far beyond mere water supply.
Types of water in the pharma industry
All water is not the same. The water that we consume in our day-to-day life will be quite unsuitable for the pharma industry and the water that is used to make medicines will actually be quite unsuitable for normal consumption! This is because the water used in making medicines is so pure that all essential minerals are sucked out of it. Plus, its quite nasty to taste!
As for the pharma industry, normal drinking water does not work because it contains microbes. Benign and quite beneficial for us, this water does not make a good carrier for medicines. It must therefore, be treated appropriately before it can be used be used. There are two types of water that are required here: water for Injection (WFI) and purified water(WPU).
Water for Injection
The water for injection is completely sterile water that goes through nonpyrogenic preparation and contains no bacteria or microbes. It is used to dilute drugs for injection. The small amount of water here does not effect the electrolyte balance in our body. For the sake of complete sterilisation, the water has to be kept at this condition even when in storage.
For this reason, water for injection is stored in a continuously circulating system where the temperature is kept high. Both these conditions are essential in ensuring that there is no contamination by microbial growth. Very strict procedures have to be followed to ensure that the water complies with given standards. This is why pre-treatment of the water by reverse osmosis plants manufacturers is so important here.
Purified Water
Like WFI, purified water must also meet extremely stringent standards before it can be called as such. This water is also used microelectronics, boiler plants, and laboratory research. All contaminants are completely removed, even those present is water that is fit for human consumption. Pre-treatment by RO plants, UV purification or activated carbon water filter is the norm here with RO plants usually the most common mechanism.
Sources of water:
Even in areas where the feed water is pure enough to drink, water purification is necessary in the pharma industry. In India, the poor quality of available water makes it all the more important. The feed water here consists of numerous contaminants. Sources of water here include:
- Groundwater
- Upland lakes
- Reservoirs
- Rivers
- Canals
- Seawater
All these sources are highly polluted today and even drinking water must go through rigorous treatment. In that scenario reverse osmosis plants manufacturers become necessary for the pharma industry.
Desalination for pharma industry
One of the areas where RO plants can be very effective is desalination for the phrama industry. With the scarcity of water a major concern in sourcing, India’s long coastline is an asset that we cannot ignore. This is a ready source of water that we have to utilise with the rapidly growing pharma industry.
RO plants are critical in this area, since this is the most widely used technology in water desalination. Desalination plants in coastal areas are major suppliers to the pharma and other industries like electronics, boiler plants, automobiles etc.
Effective effluent management
The treatment of feed water is actually only part of the services offered by RO plant manufacturers. Many of them also offer a comprehensive effluent management treatments. This is important for two reasons:
- Scarcity of water: Effective effluent management recycles the water so that it can be reused.
- Standards applicable or legal requirements: Given the high presence of contaminants in the reject water in a pharma factory, effluent management also becomes an environmental necessity.
This is a complicated process and requires instalment of special treatment processes within the premises. This can involve additional expense and is usually considered only when strictly required.
As we can see, reverse osmosis plants manufacturers have a huge role to play in the pharma industry. As the latter shows impressive growth in India, the role of RO manufacturers will only increase.
