Grünenthal GmbH - Plant for highly active substances
Grünenthal is an independent pharmaceutical company which carries out research, operates internationally and has been owned by the Wirtz family since it was founded in 1946. The company’s preparations can be found in more than 80 different countries and it employs almost 5000 staff around the world.
As part of the project to construct a new technical facility, an area was required at the site in Aachen for handling highly active substances. VTU-Engineering was enlisted to work together with the operators to devise a concept for this. As a result of this, the basic engineering, safety analysis, detailed planning work, coordination of the commissioning and the training of the operators was also awarded to VTU.
A series of workshops were held to establish the wishes and demands of the operators. What was crucial here was to ascertain the range of different possible uses for the plant, to prevent any hazards to people and the environment and to ensure that employees are able to work without full protection that is independent of the air in the room. All of the equipment, blow-down systems and the exhaust air decontamination system had to be housed in a restricted area of space.
The concept study was accompanied by in-depth research into all of the applicable laws, regulations and sets of rules.
This resulted in complete spatial separation of the special area from the rest of the technical facility, accessible through a combined people/materials double door system. The essential components at the plant are a reactor unit including a condenser and aftercooler, an agitated pressure nutsch filter, a water ring pump, a 3-stage scrubber and two activated carbon adsorbers. The entire process of handling the feedstocks, intermediate products and waste products, from metering, weighing in, transfer preparation, intermediate buffering and waste collection, was carried out without any contamination using four insulators. Personal protection was deemed more important than product protection, and this is why all insulators are operated at a slight negative pressure.
All exhaust air branches are fed via a collecting line for waste air treatment and monitored by means of O2 measurement. This is designed in such a way that during normal operation the exhaust process air and/or, in the event of damage, all of the air in rooms in the special area can be decontaminated while maintaining the required negative pressure.
By means of monitoring the indoor air in rooms, samples of the indoor air and the exhaust air are measured continuously at 8 measurement points upstream and downstream of the exhaust air treatment facility, analysed and visualised online. With some substances, the measurement range extends down as far as the ppb range and therefore provides protection for both people and the environment before a major hazard occurs.
