Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology

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

• Oxygen
• Carbon Dioxide
• Nitrogen

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.

• Nitrogen

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.

• Nitrogen
• Carbon Dioxide 

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 VESTAL^TM system helps to protect liquid products from impurities found in the air and reduces the potential for corrosion in tanks and vessels.

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.

• Nitrogen

Services

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

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 – ACC^TM system, to meet your needs.

Gases

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

• Nitrogen

Services

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

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.

• Nitrogen

Services

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

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

• Oxygen
• Carbon Dioxide

Brands

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

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

• Nitrogen

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.

• Carbon dioxide
• Nitrogen

Services

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

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 helium, nitrogen, hydrogen, air, oxygen 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

• ALPHAGAZ™