The changing pattern of demand for oil products has required that refining practices be adjusted to maximize yields of premium products from crudes. There has been a concomitant deterioration in the quality of the ‘residual’ or ‘heavy’ fuel oil used in power generation. A major constraint on the burning of such heavy fuel is a restriction on particulate emissions. These emissions largely comprise carbon particles (coke), which form from the individual oil spray droplets and remain unburnt. Poorer quality oils have an increased propensity to form coke, and can give rise to unacceptable emissions. One way of countering these increases is to make the fuel spray finer and hence improve burn-out. Research has been aimed firstly at quantifying the effects of those oil properties that directly influence coke formation and combustion and then at developing improved atomizers and water-in-oil emulsions to reduce droplet sizes.
Final formulation and cryopreservation of the cell product is a critical and high-value step in cell therapy manufacturing. At this stage, the cells have been through a tedious selection, modification and expansion process, and maintaining their health and viability through this step is of utmost importance. This downstream step of final formulation heavily relies on manual processes that bring inherent user-dependent variability, and it becomes unsustainable with the demand for increased output in a manufacturing setting. The necessity to reduce open process steps, ensure process traceability, minimize DMSO contact time with cells and facilitate electronic data capture establishes the need for flexible automation at this step. The preferred automated system should be functionally closed with single-use disposables and should provide the ability to scale the process in a reproducible fashion. The system should reduce the number of open events compared to the current manual process and ensure material and process data traceability using industry-accepted computation. Implementing automation at this step not only ensures a more consistent product, it may also be an effective way to reduce risk at a critical step to support product delivery to the patients, while also reducing manufacturing costs.
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