CDS Container Drying Station

The L.B. Bohle CDS Container Drying Station provides accelerated and validated cGMP drying for pharmaceutical containers that have been cleaned in the PUR Cleaning System. It solves industry problems in waiting for manufacturing containers, such as IBCs, bins, and drums to dry in passive air or needing additional manual drying.

Instead, the CDS combines with PUR to provide a fully integrated solution that reduces costs,  turnaround times, labor demands, and provides more sterile containers.

Drying challenges

After wet cleaning, pharmaceutical-grade containers often require extensive drying time before reuse. Traditional methods like manual drying or passive air drying not only extend turnaround times but also introduce risks of residual moisture, contamination, and human error.

These inefficiencies incur major downstream impacts, including production delays, risks of contamination from inadequate or non-uniform drying, cross-contamination hazards in multi-product facilities Increased labor demands in manual monitoring and handling, inconsistent results that make GMP validation more difficult and audit readiness uncertain.

Thus In high-throughput production environments, poor drying performance translates into lower productivity, higher operational costs, and greater regulatory exposure.

CDS features

The CDS Container Drying Station from L.B. Bohle provides a fully automated, efficient, and GMP-compliant drying solution to these problems. Designed with process safety, consistency, and speed in mind, the CDS ensures that cleaned containers are rapidly and thoroughly dried—ready for immediate reuse or sterile storage. It comprises four main components:

1. Heating and ventilation module
2. Control unit
3. Adapter tube for the suspended ceiling
4. Connecting tube between adapter, suspended ceiling and drying lid of cleaning system

The heating and ventilation module consists of an aluminum frame, which is cladded with stainless steel cassettes on the inside and connected to process air. The module is ideally mounted above a suspended ceiling, through which supply and process air pipes enter the drying room.

The CDS does not need filters. Instead, filtered pharma-quality process air is conveyed from the room as supply air through the module and heated to a maximum temperature of approx. 60 °C before being fed into the container through the process air pipe that connects to the adapter on the container lid, with container valve opened so that drying air can escape back into the room. This circulation process with heated pharmaceutical air eliminates the need for unnecessary and maintenance-intensive filters in the heating and ventilation module.

The control cabinet with the operating unit is mounted on the wall in the drying room and contains the main switch and the operating elements for the functions: heat switching, drying time, and process air temperature control.  The CDS can be used as a stand-alone solution or in combination with L.B. Bohle’s PUR container cleaning, in which case all operating options can be performed from  the PUR touch panel for easier fully integrated control with combined visualization.

Container Drying Station applications and benefits

The CDS can be applied to a wide range of applications across the pharmaceutical, nutritional, food and fine chemicals industries. These include post-CIP drying of blending and transfer containers, providing the final drying stage in closed-loop cleaning systems. and use in solids processing, granulation, and tableting facilities requiring rapid equipment readiness.

In all these applications, the CDS delivers a range of tangible benefits that include:

• Faster container drying cycles: Significantly reducing turnaround times
• Guaranteed complete internal and external drying: thanks to uniform, filtered airflow:
• GMP-compliant design: Fully documentable and integrable with cleaning systems
• Hands-free operation: Reduces labor and minimizes contamination risk
• Safe and ergonomic: Designed for cleanroom use and operator safety
• Compatible with various container types: Flexible
• Versatility: The CDS is a flexible platform that supports bins, IBCs, and drums and can either be used in combination with the PUR container cleaning system or as a stand-alone solution
• Resource-saving: Low specific energy consumption and maintenance requirements with less need to change filters

CDS Drying Range

L.B. Bohle offers its CDS drying station in a range of sizes and air flow capacities.

The following list provides an initial overview of system capabilities:

Integrating the L.B. Bohle CDS container drying solution into cleaning operations enhances efficiency, reduces process times, and eliminates inconsistencies to provide more hygienic and validated cGMP results for higher overall productivity and ultimate product quality.​

Resources

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