| dc.description.abstract | While other segments of industry have slowed the biotech and pharmaceutical industries are emerging as strong growth industries. To participate in this promising growth the mechanical seal manufacturers have begun to focus their efforts on creating products that will more adequately meet the needs of those industries. While the basic mechanical seal has not significantly changed, there are design refinements that assist the biotech and pharmaceutical industries in producing the highest quality product possible. When discussing mechanical seal designs for mixers it is important to understand that the pharmaceutical and biotech industries have some fundamental application differences. The general differences are summarized in Table 1. It may be surmised from the information in Table 1 that the pharmaceutical industry has as wide a variety of applications as the chemical industry. It is also clear that the biotech industry has comparatively mild operating conditions. Care should be taken to avoid quickly judging that biotech applications are easier to seal. In fact, there are conditions and requirements that make the biotech industry mixer sealing an interesting and challenging chore. The top entry mixer still dominates the mixer marketplace. Top entry drives are used in gold and nickel processing, chemical and petrochemical plants, paper plants, and heavily used in pharmaceutical plants. This paper is limited to sealing slow speed top and bottom entry mixers, that is, mixers with shaft rotational speeds of 350 rpm or less, used in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. In an attempt to avoid confusion, and while there are many similarities between the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, this paper will separate the discussions about these two industries. | en |
