In the biopharmaceutical marketplace where the requirement for high quality and cost-effective filtration is extensive, Pall® clarification and prefilters serve an important role in the removal of undesirable material from process streams and by protecting comparatively higher priced final filters, increasing their service life.   Clarification filters remove contaminants from a fluid stream primarily by direct interception and sieving, where the unwanted particles are caught in or on the surface of the filter medium respectively. In addition, some liquid filters' removal capabilities can be achieved or enhanced by charge effects in which case they may retain undesirable species by adsorption.  Types of Filtration There are two classic types of direct flow clarification: Depth filtration - featuring layers of fibers compressed to form a 'depth' of filter medium. More info... Membrane filtration - usually utilizing thin sheets of synthetic filter media, designed to capture particles larger than the minimum pore size on or within their structure. Filter Functions A distinction between these filters is important because the two types often serve different functions. Depth filters when used as prefilters, serve to effectively remove large volumes of suspended solids from a process and protect elements downstream from fouling or clogging. More info... Membrane filters have less capacity for suspended solids and may be more suited to lower-dirt content fluids.

Pall's Clarification Capabilities

Pall® high performance filters decrease filtration time, increase throughput and reduce the need for multiple filter change-outs ensuring savings in overall filtration costs. Pall® technologies are used to reduce bioburden, remove particulate contamination and clarify solutions prior to further downstream processing. These products are optimized for best performance in the aforementioned applications, and offer excellent value when compared to other filter devices in the marketplace. Many of these products are fully scalable (from laboratory to manufacturing operations) and are available in single-use format.

Whether you are preparing small volumes of reagents, individual bottles of buffers or media or developing pharmaceutical processes, Pall has the products to meet your clarification  needs.

Pall UpScale_SM Program - Clarification and Prefiltration

Pall is well-equipped to support processes as they are scaled up. Different size cartridges and capsules for each specific Pall® prefilter grades contain identical materials of construction. This feature ensures that scale-up and scale-down studies yield relevant information with minimum requalification. The availability of a variety of capsules for small-scale operations is beneficial, particularly for new product development.

In a new product development, capital investment can be a concern since not all new biopharmaceutical products become commercialized, so single-use capsules make it possible to produce new products during the early development stages, without a large initial outlay.

Clarification products in Pall’s UpScale_SM range incorporate the following filter media:

• Nylon 66
• PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene)
• Polypropylene
• Resin-bonded glass fiber
• Cellulose-based depth media

Prefiltration in Allegro Single-use Systems

Managing the issues of cleaning and cleaning validation is one of the major challenges facing the biopharmaceutical industry. This has resulted in single-use equipment often being chosen in preference to repeat-use stainless steel systems.

Benefits

• Reduced assembly costs
• Reduced cleaning costs
• Reduced cleaning validation
• Reduced costs for capital equipment - capsule filters have a typical installation cost that is 80% lower than a similar sized stainless steel housing system
• Reduced risk of lost production time due to simple procedures
• Hazardous liquids can be contained during processing with minimal risk of operator exposure

Choice and Flexibility

Pall supplies customized single-use systems comprising clarification capsule filters combined with customized tubing systems and biocontainers. Disposable, single-use capsule filters in a broad range of sizes with surface areas from a few cm² to several m² are available.The possibilities are endless with Pall's Allegro™ single use solutions.