Pharmaceutical Industry: active ingredients’ production

Centrifugal pumps are used during development process of medicine compounds.

Pharmaceutical Industry includes both research and production of new drugs. This industry type deals with production of primary chemical-pharmaceutical products (pharmaceutical active ingredients, biologic/biotechnological ingredients, cosmetics, active ferments) and substances for medicines.

Words like medicines, drugs and medicinal products are usually used as synonyms but EU directives that are regulating the pharmaceutical sector, use drug. This word refers to any substance or its aggregation that:

• is typical of therapeutic or preventive properties against human diseases;
• can be used by or administered to people to reactivate, correct or modify physiological activity through a pharmacological/immunological or metabolic action.

Each drug is made up of one or more active ingredients together with various excipients. Healing action is due to the active ingredients: they are substances with a specific biological activity that, in this case, is therapeutic.

In pharmacological and medical science, active ingredients can be natural (ex. alkaloids and essences extracted from trees that are used by traditional medicine and phytotherapy), semi-synthetic (ex. Acetylsalicylic acid used in Aspirina) and synthetic (most of drugs).

Active Ingredients: the Italian Leadership

Active ingredients must be compliant to the highest quality’ and reliability’s levels of chemical industry. Regulation (UE) 528/2012 states that, active ingredients that are necessary for biocide products, must be approved nor included in the positive list of the referring product.

Italy is one of the worldwide leaders in active ingredients’ branch: it has a 3 million euros business. 85% of this production type is exported to more than 90 countries (source: Federchimica).

Centrifugal Pumps in Pharmaceutical Industry

Fluids with suspended solids are frequently used during pharmaceutical active ingredients’ production. For such applications, CDR Pompe offers X Series: magnetic drive centrifugal pumps with open impeller. They can manage this liquid type without external filters. CDR Pompe designed 4 types of magnetic drive pumps that are suitable for industry that is focused on extraction of biological origin compounds (natural, fermentation or biotechnological derivation):

• UTS and UTN: recommended for fluid handling (toxic, dangerous, aggressive) that are mostly clean and are suitable for those industries where safety is a priority, like in pharmaceutical production.
• XTS and XTN: no more frequent break down of centrifugal pumps with double mechanical seal.

Besides Pharmaceutical Industry, CDR Pompe offers solutions for Chemical and General industry too: check out the complete list of applications of our centrifugal pumps.