It is critically important that pharmaceuticals do not become contaminated, and the most damaging contaminant is water, especially when as a vapour it can pass straight through many plastic packaging materials.
Water reduces the potency and shelf life of a wide range of pharmaceutical and medical products, sometimes dramatically.
The process of manufacturing and forming blister packaging reduces the material of a blister pack’s ability to keep water vapour out by around 75%.
To avoid contamination, it is therefore important to measure to check the resulting permeability.
Versaperm Limited, a technology leader, has launched a new instrument for the fast and accurate measurement of water vapour permeability.
As a bonus, it can be configured to measure the diffusion rates of many gaseous elements (water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc).
The new WVTR (water vapour transmission rate) meter can be used to test virtually all flat material samples and finished packaging types.
The MK VI meter’s highly automated computerised control can cope with several samples at a time, and still give a reading in as little as 30 minutes for some materials.
Accuracy is around one part per million (with some samples a few parts per hundred million).
Sensitivities are typically in the range 0.05 - 3200g/m2/day. Versaperm also provides a laboratory sample testing service.
The new WVTR (water vapour transmission rate) meter is available from Novasys Group.