Last Updated on August 28, 2024 by KC Wong
Large multi national corporations are extremely careful on the cold room specialist which they choose to build their pharmaceutical cold rooms. The medical or pharmaceutical products stored in these rooms are often worth tens or even hundreds of times more than the food products kept in a typical cold room and hence the selection criterion is stringent. Here, as a pharmaceutical cold room specialist, I’ll walk through some of the major distinctions in terms of design of pharmaceutical cold room compared to other common cold rooms
1. Backup Refrigeration System in cold room
It is almost a guaranteed that pharmaceutical clients will want the inclusion of a 100% backup refrigeration system, complete with copper piping for redundancy. If the primary refrigeration system encounters an issue, the backup system automatically activates. It’s also essential to have a separate power source for both the primary and backup systems, as electrical trips to the ELCBs and MCBs are not uncommon.
One needs to caution a newbie client on the associated risk and even assert the need for redundancy if he/her insist on a single refrigeration system. The client will be appreciative of your inputs and prompts.
This level of redundancy is typically less of a concern for owners of standard cold rooms, who may opt for a single system design due to cost considerations.
2. Engineering Calculations for cold room cooling capacity required
Most owners of standard cold rooms rarely question the contractor’s proposed cooling capacity requirements. However, for pharmaceutical cold rooms, reviewing these calculations is essential. Owners will often hold meetings to have the cold room contractor explain and validate the cooling capacity calculations, along with the underlying assumptions. One would be astonished to know there are plenty of ‘cold room specialists’ who cannot come up with a theoretical approach on heat load calculations.
3. Safety Feature Considerations.
We’ve all seen movies where the protagonist gets trapped in a cold room and nearly turns into an ice block. This tragedy could happen in reality. Owners of pharmaceutical cold rooms are particularly concerned about user safety. For example, pharmaceutical cold rooms often include door sensors that trigger an alarm if someone enters the room but doesn’t exit within five minutes.
4. Specific Placement of Evaporator Coils and Racks with coldroom
Pharmaceutical cold room owners typically plan every detail of the room’s interior. This includes the number of cartons per rack, the space required for electrical stackers or pallet jacks to navigate, and the precise placement of cameras to monitor both goods and personnel movements. These details are discussed in depth with cold room specialists and contractors.
5. Cold room Temperature control and Profiling
In the pharmaceutical industry, ensuring the efficacy and safety of medications stored is paramount. One crucial aspect of this is maintaining the correct temperature range in cold rooms, where many drugs need to be stored under specific conditions to preserve their stability and effectiveness.
Common cold rooms includes just one temperature sensor and indicator which measures temperature at a single point within the cold room. But in cold rooms storing costly medical products or pharmaceutical drugs, the cold room specialist have to validate that different areas of cold room falls within the acceptable temperature spread as required by the customer. This is where the technical knowledge and experience of the appointed pharmaceutical cold room contractor is valued.
6. Compliance with User Requirement Specifications (URS) and International Standards
Pharmaceutical cold room owners often have detail User Requirement Specifications (URS) that the cold room specialist must adhere to like a Bible. These specifications frequently require adherence to standards like Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). The cold room specialist may then price in the correct material and construction cost in relation to the given parameters. Such detailed URS are usually absent for standard cold rooms unless it’s a major build-up involving external consultants.
The above are just some examples of what pharmaceutical cold room owners demand.
In all, construction of pharmaceutical cold rooms does not require utilization of sophisticated or transformative technologies. What is of more significance is the in-depth understanding of the requirements of these specialized coldrooms and extensive experience of the contractor.
The following are some of the companies whom we have built / maintained their Pharmaceutical Cold Rooms over the past years.
If you would like to learn more about pharmaceutical cold room construction or have specific design-related questions, please feel free to contact Roller Asia.