Howorth Air Technology recently supplied four downflow booths to a global pharmaceutical company. Teams from Howorth and the client worked closely throughout the project to ensure that specific requirements were met, and superior quality of manufacture and containment levels were maintained. The name of the pharma firm remains confidential.
Howorth’s containment equipment is known for its bespoke, innovative design. Each of the four booths supplied had a different design, making it suitable for handling a specific pharmaceutical product.
One of the booths features a Howorth 5D containment shield or screen, which gives an additional level of containment and operator protection without requiring a glovebox isolator.
A key advantage of this shield is that it is more comfortable for the operator than a fixed height glovebox, as found in an isolator booth. A booth fitted with one of these screens can provide virtually the same levels of containment as an isolator, but the operator can walk around the whole booth and move freely, whereas an isolator has fixed dimensions and is designed around one particular product process, with no flexibility to change processes or product lines.
The facility and the booths have been future-proofed by the incorporation of high containment screen tracks into the fabrication of each of the three booths that currently do not have a 5D shield, which means that a shield could be retrofitted should the booths have a change of purpose.
The client wanted the booths to offer maximum flexibility of process and comfort for the operator and so Howorth installed drum lifters, capable of lifting 50kg drums, into each booth. Movement of the drums is assisted, allowing operators to manoeuvre them easily into position, with the controls integrated neatly into the booth control panel.
The installation is also energy efficient owing to Passive Infra Red (PIR) sensors within the operating area, auto-running the booth when personnel are detected. To save energy, the system automatically shuts down after a set period if it does not detect anyone working in the booth.