Water Purification System - TKA

H2O. Nothing else.

 

Modern assay diluents, blockers and antibody stabilizers are produced by CANDOR. They enable significant improvements with respect to lower limits of detection (LLOD’s), precision and reliability of ELISA and other immunoassays. Such solutions are not comparable to former established diluents for immunoassays as they offer great advantages of sensitivity and robustness for ELISA. But one aspect didn’t change at all: The water. As always the main component of modern ELISA diluents is water. Water is thus a very essential raw material. Impurities in the water could be traced in the assay and thus in assay results. But any imprecision in results – even due to impurities of assay solutions – cannot be accepted by CANDOR, regardless whether such assays are run in research, bioanalytics for pharmaceutical research or in routine diagnostics. Thus CANDOR needs the very best raw materials for production and that is not only pure water, it is ultrapure water.

An industrial producer like CANDOR has some additional requirements for production equipment. A water purification system has to be easy-to-operate and easy-to-maintain. It also has to show good process stability without downtimes and it should be economical as well. On some days only a few hundred litres are needed, whilst on other days some thousand litres of ultrapure water in highest quality have to be produced by the purification system. As such requirements are quite hard to fulfil, CANDOR decided to use a complete industrial system manufactured by TKA (Part of Thermo Fisher Scientific). An automatic pretreatment system with double hardness stabilization is coupled to a Reverse-Osmosis module. Electrolysis, ion exchange and continuously ion exchanger regeneration by electro-deionisation (EDI) make ultrapure water starting from drinking water quality.

An additional polisher module (0.055µS/cm), continuous UV-disinfection (254 nm) as well as an inline sterile filtration unit (0.2 µm) guarantee the good parameters of ultrapure water. The water quality standard is CLRW (Clinical Laboratory Reagent Water), which is the right choice for any clinical analyzer worldwide.

The industrial water purification system produced by TKA (Part of Thermo Fisher Scientific), which was installed at the CANDOR facility, enables processing of around 600 Litres per hour. Thus it is well-suited for current demands, but it’s capacity can be multiplied by simply exchanging some of the modules to larger ones. Such upgradeability gives a good basis of safety for spending the capital on this industrial system.

There was an additional advantage with respect to the TKA-System. CANDOR used a small laboratory based system of TKA for an extended evaluation period. This lab water purification system works with technically identical purification modules only in smaller volumes, and thus CANDOR had extensive experience with the TKA-modules, before purchasing the large industrial system. The system is routinely maintained by TKA service technicians. As a result there was never a single problem nor any downtime of the system. Ultrapure water is accessible at any time for production.

CANDOR can trust in its ultrapure water: H2O – Nothing else!