Single-use technology offers huge benefits for both flexibility and efficiency. It reduces downtime by eliminating cleaning steps, helps avoid risk of cross-contamination, and enables modularity in manufacturing and unit operations.
But efficiency isn’t just about what your equipment can do – it’s also about how well it performs and scales up. Equipment failures in large-scale bioprocess can be costly in terms of material loss and downtime. For large manufacturers, a batch failure (i.e., one that causes product loss) can cost millions of dollars. More minor issues, like buffer leaks during a mixing step, are less costly, but they still have an impact – increasing the time, material, and consumable use for that step.
Here we’ll take a look at some of the most common causes for leaks in single-use bioprocessing mixers, and at some ways to prevent them.