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Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology

Meeting the highest standards for quality, compliance and reliability

Air Liquide’s safe and reliable high-purity gas solutions for the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industry help enable compliance with the most stringent quality and regulatory requirements in a cost effective way. Patient safety is a key focus of the industry, and stringent regulations result in strict quality assurance, mandatory traceability and process control requirements. To address these complexities, Air Liquide supplies reliable, high purity medical, industrial and specialty gases, and works to ensure safety in gas delivery and gas handling methods.

Our advanced expertise in temperature control, inerting and gas-liquid mixing applications enable us to supply innovative and customized solutions to the entire supply chain, from research and development laboratories and raw materials manufacturers to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) manufacturers and bio/pharmaceutical companies.

In a highly complex and regulated environment, we work closely with our bio/pharmaceutical customers to understand and satisfy your quality and cGMP compliance requirements. A wide range of pharmaceutical and GMP excipients (ICH Q7) as well as laboratory and cryobiology equipment, available through Air Liquide Healthcare brands SEPPIC and Pacific Science, further complement our offer to the biopharmaceutical and life sciences industries.

Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Value Chain Steps

API MANUFACTURING

Whether you are involved in bio-manufacturing of large-molecule biologics, such as therapeutic proteins, or producing small-molecule drugs through chemical synthesis, Air Liquide responds to your process needs, ranging from cell culture, inerting and temperature control, to pelletizing, particle size reduction and improved environmental compliance.

As a stakeholder in the pharmaceutical supply chain, Air Liquide understands the expectations and demands biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies place on suppliers that work to ensure product quality, safety and consistency. We thus offer USP-NF grade medical gasses and industrial gasses when they are required.

Bio-manufacturing – cell culture

Upstream bioprocessing applications require a mixture of oxygen (O2), nitrogen (N2), and carbon dioxide (CO2). This mixture is sparged through the cell culture media to provide replenishment of oxygen during cell growth. In addition, carbon dioxide is used for pH control, while nitrogen is used to strip excess carbon dioxide out of solution and balance the overall flow rate. With Air Liquide, you can be confident in the reliability and quality of the gas supply for your controlled atmospheres.

Gases

Cryopreservation

Immersion in liquid or vapor phase nitrogen, which results in ultra-low temperatures (between -135°C and -196°C), enables the preservation and short- to long-term storage of biological materials, such as mammalian cell lines or tissues.

Gases

Air Liquide supplies liquid nitrogen in a range of purities and volumes to meet your needs.

Inerting- blanketing and purging

Raw materials, intermediate products, APIs, and excipients may be sensitive to the oxygen and moisture present in atmospheric air. Thus, they often need to be protected with an inert gas to avoid undesirable reactions and maintain drug efficacy. Nitrogen inerting, blanketing and purging also help to mitigate ignition and explosion risks during the storage of flammable solvents, powder milling and pneumatic transfer. Our inerting solutions come with engineering support and provide optimized nitrogen consumption and accurate monitoring, minimizing product degradation and safety risks while reducing operating costs.

Gases

We supply pure gases and gas mixtures in a range of volumes to meet your needs.

Services

Air Liquide provides engineering support including modeling, sizing, consumption estimates, and equipment recommendations. We also assist with initial removal of impurities. We can perform tank farm inerting audits to help you maintain an inert environment.

Brands

Developed to support product quality and process safety, Air Liquide’s VESTALTM system helps to protect liquid products from impurities found in the air and reduces the potential for corrosion in tanks and vessels.

Process temperature control

Certain API manufacturing steps, such as exothermic or low-temperature chemical reactions (e.g. chiral synthesis), require low or very low temperatures to be safely and efficiently controlled. Liquid nitrogen can be used to cool the reaction medium, either directly or indirectly, as it vaporizes and warms up. Another manufacturing step, freeze drying, is often the process of choice to stabilize therapeutic proteins or vaccine formulations.

Cryogenic cooling offers an environmentally friendly alternative to using conventional coolants (CFC) for lyophilization, while reducing cycle times. Cryogenics replace the need for CFC and are particularly suited for very low temperatures. The high available cooling power allows you to safely control exothermic reactions. If cooling and heating cycles are required, we offer a heating module using low pressure steam. With this combination, we can control a wide range of processes from temperatures as low as -140°C to +200°C with fast start-up and short cycle times.

Air Liquide offers standard turnkey solutions with refrigerant capacity of up to 100 kW and the possibility to manufacture higher-capacity equipment if required. Flexible, compact, noiseless, and low-maintenance, these units can easily be integrated into your production line. Our extensive experience with cryogenics and the simplicity of the process ensure the safety and reliability of our units.

Gases

Air Liquide supplies liquid nitrogen in a range of purities and volumes to meet your needs.

Services

We provide gas handling safety expertise and a range of resources, including Certificates of Analysis (CoA) upon request.

Cryogenic pelletizing

Many scientific studies highlight the role of the gut microbiome in human health and the potential benefits of probiotics. Efficient pelletizing of live microbial strains, such as probiotics, often requires very low temperatures. Air Liquide provides cryogenic solutions and tailored equipment, such as the Cryo Immersion Unit – ACCTM system, to meet your needs.

Gases

Air Liquide supplies liquid nitrogen in a range of purities and volumes to meet your needs.

Services

We provide gas handling safety expertise and a range of resources, including Certificates of Analysis (CoA) upon request.

Particle size reduction

Particle size reduction of APIs and excipients plays an important role in finished drug product performance and quality, with an impact on dissolution, bioavailability, content uniformity and stability. Cryogenic grinding, or cryo-grinding, involves cooling a material to low or very low temperatures with a cryogenic fluid (typically liquid nitrogen) in order to produce particles with a narrow size distribution. Cryogenic technology makes it possible to process soft or heat-sensitive products more efficiently and without the risk of thermal degradation.

As materials become brittle, fine powders can be obtained easily and with a minimum expenditure of energy. Micronization, using gaseous nitrogen to create high particle velocity and high-energy impact between particles, can also be used to reduce and control particle size and improve product homogeneity. The resulting inert atmosphere further protects your products from oxidation, potential clumping due to atmospheric moisture and reduces dust explosion risks.

Gases

We supply pure gases and gas mixtures in a range of volumes to meet your needs.

Services

We provide gas handling safety expertise and a range of resources, including Certificates of Analysis (CoA) upon request.

Wastewater treatment

Using water resources responsibly and respecting the environment in dealing with wastewater effluent requires innovative and efficient solutions. Air Liquide applies its many years of experience in the water treatment industry to design systems that meet the diverse needs of our customers. Our solutions put safety and the environment first by replacing highly regulated and hazardous acids for pH control. Air Liquide supplies a range of products, equipment and services for water and wastewater treatment. To explore all of our water treatment offers, visit our Environment page.

Gases

Brands

Air Liquide’s wastewater treatment systems, TURBOXALTM and VENTOXALTM, replace or enhance existing air based aeration basins or lagoons with a pure oxygen feed, increasing wastewater treatment efficiency while avoiding significant capital investment.

DRUG FORMULATION, PACKAGING AND DISTRIBUTION

As the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries continue to innovate and develop increasingly complex and high-value molecules to enhance patient quality of life, maintaining product integrity to the point of administration is critical to the drug’s therapeutic effect.

Whether managing oxygen exposure of sensitive products, optimizing drug formulations, or maintaining cold chain temperature for your clinical and biological samples, Air Liquide offers solutions that help improve product stability. You can count on the expertise of our engineers to help design the gas installation and supply mode that best fits your needs.

Packaging

Some pharmaceutical products may be sensitive to oxygen and moisture present in atmospheric air. Thus, they often need to be protected with an inert gas to avoid product degradation and maintain drug efficacy. A number of therapeutic proteins are packaged under nitrogen during fill-finish operations to prolong their shelf-life. With nitrogen coming into direct contact with your finished drug product, we understand the importance of a compliant, high-quality and reliable gas supply.

Gases

Cold chain logistics

Temperature fluctuations can significantly impact a drug’s stability, and consequently, its therapeutic effectiveness. With the growing role of biologics in the industry’s pipeline, globalization of clinical trials and rising interest in personalized medicine, cold chain logistics solutions ensure that temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and diagnostic products remain stable during distribution and reach their destination undamaged.

When relying on the use of dry ice or liquid nitrogen, you can be confident that even highly sensitive shipments such as clinical samples, vaccines, diagnostic and biological materials, are preserved and shipped with absolute integrity.

Gases

Air Liquide supplies liquid nitrogen as well as carbon dioxide in the liquid and solid (dry ice) state.

Services

  • Customized carbon dioxide pelletizing systems for on-site generation of dry ice and Gas handling safety expertise

QUALITY CONTROL

Analytical laboratories conduct analysis and quality controls on raw materials as well as intermediate and end products to detect the trace and quantity of various components or impurities.

Analysis and quality control

Air Liquide supplies many analytical gases commonly used to operate lab instruments and analyzers. Air Liquide offers various solutions to operate lab instruments and analyzers and to enhance your analytical performance, such as our ALPHAGAZ™ pure specialty gases, analytical services and traceability for gases we deliver.

Gases

Ultra-high purity gases such as heliumnitrogen, hydrogen, airoxygen and argon are used as carrier gases. A full range of calibration gas mixtures, which may contain from two to multiple components, are produced with very precise concentrations and purities. They act as the reference gases used to calibrate the equipment itself.

Brands

Why Choose Us?

  • Industry expertise
    Air Liquide address the complexities of your industry by supplying reliable, high purity gas products and secure gas supply methods.

  • Customizable solutions
    Our advanced expertise in temperature control, inerting and gas-liquid mixing applications enable us to supply innovative and customized solutions to the entire supply chain.

  • Engineering support
    Count on the expertise of our engineers to help design the gas installation and supply mode that best fits your needs.

  • Compliance
    Due to the complexity of your work and the strict regulatory environment, we will work closely with you to understand and meet your quality and compliance requirements through quality assurance, traceability and process control.

  • Quality control
    Air Liquide has developed a range of gas products specifically for manufacturers of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) and drug products.Our high-purity gases are traceable and delivered with certificates of analysis and conformity

  • Reliable supply
    Thanks to Air Liquide's unique cold-chain logistic solutions, your products remain stable and undamaged due to thermo-regulated point-to-point transportations.