Flexible disposable bags provide a number of benefits over solid containers for handling small quantities of material in a production or R&D facility.
Benefits include:
Lightweight and easy for a single operator to handle.
Flexibility to allow sticky poor flowing materials to be manipulated out of the bag.
Disposable with no cleaning requirements, reducing associated costs with cleaning and storing containers.
Low investment cost compared to solid transfer systems
However, contained transfers of product out of a bag have always been difficult, with open pouring creating dust clouds that can be hazardous to operators and lead to cross contamination on products.
The Hicoflex® disposable containment technology has been designed to provide a high contained docking system between a product handling bag and the process. The system is simple, effective and provides a safe working environment with minimal investment.
The Hicoflex® disposable containment technology consists of two identical couplings which are joined together to seal the external faces, thus providing a closed transfer. The Hicoflex® disposable containment system is opened by applying a compression force to both ends to create an opening through which product can transfer. The Hicoflex® is attached to both a disposable containment bag (from 1L up to 50L) for transporting materials or to a disposable containment adapter which fits the inlet or outlet chute of the process to allow transfer of the product.
With containment performance between 1-10 µg/m³ (SW TWA) as standard, with an optional extraction shroud to further improve containment levels to <1 µg/m³ (ST TWA), the technology is more than suitable for API and Biotech manufacture, as well as secondary solid dosage manufacture.
