Life Science & Pharmaceuticals

Water Analysis in Life Sciences

The requirements for water analysis in life science are high. Besides ensuring high product quality, process safety and reliability are among the most important objectives.

Pharmaceutical water in particular places high demands on the accuracy of online analysis, since the water quality of e.g. water for injection is decisive for the product quality. For the compliance of the water quality there are standards as well as pharmaceutical standards (pharmacopoeia), which define the requirements for such pharmaceutical water, such as water for injection (WFI) and ultra pure water (UPW).

Solutions for Life Science & Pharma

LAR’s Solutions and Beneftis

Online Process Analyzers:

Application-specific water quality analyzers as turnkey solutions for your analytical measuring requirements.
Worldwide Support:

Our Customer Success Team supports you from the first contact to realization and commissioning to after sales services. We care for you!
Effective Water Management:

Using the proper online process instrumentation helps to avoid high costs, e.g. by preventing product losses or losses of heating energy.

Types of Pharmaceutical Water and their Limitations

Depending on its usage pharmaceutical water needs treatment with various filters and/or disinfection (see the schematic pharma water system above). Generally, there are three types of pharma water defined, :

Purified Water (PW) or Aqua Purificata
Highly Purified Water (HPW) or Aqua Valde Purificata
Water for Injection (WFI) or Aqua Ad Iniectabilia

International Pharmacopeias

In pharma industry the production of Purified Water (PW) and the maximum TOC (total organic carbon) level is defined by more than one authority.

The most popular pharmacopeias are:

Chinese Pharmacopoeia (CP),
European Pharmacopoeia (EP),
Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP),
Japanese Pharmacopoeia (JP), and
U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP).

In the pharmaceutical sector water is inter alia used as

Cleaning agent
Excipient
Ingredient
Raw material and much more

Depending on its usage, pharmaceutical water needs a certain purity.
Requirements on water quality and monitoring equipment are high.

Water for injections (WFI) is a demanding application of UPW in the pharmaceutical industry. In the manufacture of any type of active ingredient and medicine, the entire production process, including the cleaning process, is seamlessly monitored.
Highly purified water (HPW) is used as cleaning agent
Ultra-pure water (UPW) is often used as process water for the production of pills, capsules and other oral medication.

Purification of water

Even drinking water or potable water contain organics and other substances in very low concentration
pharmaceutically used water needs to be purified before it is used in manufacturing processes
The treatment of this so-called feedwater or make-up water takes place on-site and is very costly