Why Is Stainless Steel Body Used In Pharmaceutical Equipment Manufacturing?
Stainless steel is such a versatile material that it has become vital for many specific applications. One of the reasons for this is the physical and chemical properties that give it an advantage over other metals and materials. It is strong but malleable. It is abundant and cheap to produce, making it very affordable. True to its name, it really is stainless. Meaning, it won't corrode away to nothingness over a period of time. This makes it suitable for applications where there is no room for potential toxicity caused by corrosion of any kind.
A notable example is its use in the Pharmaceutical industry.
Stainless steel comes in a large number of grades as such, but in the pharmaceutical industry, the grades 304, 304L, 316 and 316L are mostly used due to their properties such as not being reactive to pharmaceutical substances as well as for lasting a long time without oxidizing away.
316 and 316L grades are used when the surface of the material comes in contact with chemical and biological substances. 304 and 304L are vice versa, used for parts that do not come into contact with the other substances. This is mainly for being efficient on costs as the former two are slightly more expensive to produce.
For some heavy pharmaceutical equipment, stainless steel is a great choice as a material. Such equipment would include :
- A stability chamber is used for testing and monitoring chemicals and biological substances. They do come in multiple sizes and can be large enough to be termed as a walk in stability chamber. This is highly important in research labs, where life-saving drugs are tested and produced.
- A photostability chamber is used for UV and visual light testing. This is especially important for certain substances or cultures that require light packaging.
- A cold chamber is used for providing storage with adjustable temperatures for pharmaceutical substances.
- A BOD incubator or a Bio-Oxygen Demand incubator, used for storing bacterial cultures in an environment where there is a high accuracy of temperature regulation as fluctuations will seriously affect the accuracy of the results themselves.
Precision scientific equipment such as these which are extremely important and valued for their use in the pharmaceutical industry have to be designed with great attention to detail and manufactured in very high quality for them to serve their purpose truly. This boils all the way down to the material used for even constructing the bodies of the equipment, which in this case, are very specific grades of stainless steel. This is why stainless steel is such an important component of the pharmaceutical industry.