From manufacturing and scientific perspectives, clean rooms require low levels of environmental pollutants including dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles, chemical vapors, and more. While non-contamination cannot be completely achieved, clean rooms have a controlled level of contamination measured by the number of particles per cubic meter at a specific particle size.
Air found in a typical urban environment contains 35 million particles per cubic meter that are 0.5 µm or larger in diameter; this corresponds to an ISO rating of 9. An ISO 1 clean room specifies just 12 particles per cubic meter which must be 0.3 µm or smaller.
Clean Rooms in Pharmaceutical & Medical settings
Operations as simple and common as hospital pharmacies, compounding pharmacies, and even retail pharmacies require clean rooms with stringent specifications to meet the needs of clients and customers. Clean rooms must be properly sanitized with all surfaces, floors, equipment, and fixtures cleaned on a regular schedule and free of micro bile and particulate contamination and moisture. These operations also require tablet compression technology such as that offered by Natoli, a global leader in providing this technology to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical, confectionery, industrial, and veterinary companies over the past 40 years. Suppliers of clean room equipment and supplies in the medical and pharmaceutical space include Kimberly-Clark, Texwipe, Velter, and Micronova.
Clean Room Design, Construction & Operation
Today’s clean rooms must be carefully designed and constructed to meet the needs of a specific type of facility and the people who work there while meeting industry standards. And clean rooms require the procurement and installation of high precision process tools. Clean rooms are essential to meeting manufacturing, industrial, and sanitary standards in commercial and industrial construction, high-end controlled environments, cold storage, laboratories, and more.
Some Leading US Clean Room Companies
Clean Rooms West, Inc. is a nationally recognized leader in clean room design, construction, and innovation, providing clean room development, set up, and operational services. Certified clean rooms must be staffed by National Environmental Balancing Bureau (NEBB) certified workers. Another company, IsoTech Design and its related company Clean Error Essentials, provide clean-air isolators and modular clean rooms, turnkey barrier isolators, RABs, and microenvironments.
Clean rooms are increasingly required in the manufacture of nanotechnology, medical, industrial, semiconductor, biotech, and pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. Companies such as SMMA Technology help clients with master planning, programming, site selection, design, and construction administration to create state-of-the-art clean room and associated process infrastructure.
Clean Room Engineering (CRE) requires cutting-edge hardware and software tools and platforms such as advanced 3D BIM Modelling in order to meet the needs of clients and to best determine the most efficient sequence of construction. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) must be developed for the safe operation of these facilities.
As with any industry, new trends are constantly emerging to help improve clean rooms making them more efficient and productive.
Following is an introduction video to clean rooms.
