Demonstrating a Pharmaceutical Freeze Dryer With Your Own Product
A buyer's guide to planning a freeze-dryer demonstration using the buyer's pharmaceutical product, with practical questions on shelf area, temperature range and vacuum for the RFQ and acceptance test.
Ask the supplier to run the demonstration with your own pharmaceutical product, not a surrogate, and agree in advance what a successful cycle must show. A trial on your formulation reveals behaviour that a generic sample cannot: how your product freezes, how its structure holds during primary drying, and whether the finished cake meets your acceptance criteria.
Match the trial to the reference values in the catalog: a 20.2 m² drying shelf area, shelf temperature control from −50 to +70 °C, and an ultimate vacuum of ≤1 Pa. Treat these as reference values only and confirm the configuration offered to you. Ask how many of your vials or containers the shelf area holds in a single run, and whether the batch size you plan is representative.
For the demonstration, request a documented cycle with your product's critical temperatures respected, and define acceptance tests: residual moisture, cake appearance, reconstitution time, and assay where relevant. Ask whether the run can be witnessed and whether cycle data are recorded and provided.
Before requesting a quote, confirm with the supplier how your material will be handled and returned, what sample quantity the trial requires, which parameters will be logged, and how the demonstration results will be reported.