The Pharmaceutical industry is a special industry that strictly follows GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices for Drugs). Its core value lies in ensuring the stability, safety and compliance of drug quality through accurate measurement of flow parameters of various media in the entire process of drug R&D, production and purification, while providing reliable data basis for production process optimization, cost control and quality traceability. In terms of medium characteristics, the covered medium types are complex and diverse, mainly including purified water, water for injection, medicinal liquids (such as antibiotic liquids, traditional Chinese medicine extracts), solvents (such as ethanol, methanol), excipients (such as glucose solution, normal saline), clean gases (such as compressed air, nitrogen), etc. Such media generally require high cleanliness and no pollution. Some medicinal liquids have corrosive and high-viscosity characteristics, and the temperature is mostly normal to medium temperature, putting forward extremely high requirements for the sanitary design, measurement accuracy, anti-pollution performance and material compatibility of flow measurement equipment.
The relevant factory types or unit types covered by this industry focus on the entire chain of drug production and R&D, mainly including chemical pharmaceutical factories, biopharmaceutical factories, traditional Chinese medicine pharmaceutical factories, pharmaceutical excipient factories and drug R&D institutions. Different types of factories and units have significantly differentiated demands for flow measurement equipment due to differences in drug dosage forms (such as injections, oral preparations, external preparations) and production processes (such as synthesis, extraction, preparation). In terms of commonly used flow equipment, the mainstream equipment includes Coriolis mass flowmeters (suitable for high-viscosity medicinal liquids, solvents and excipients, which can accurately measure mass flow without being affected by medium viscosity and density fluctuations, and the sanitary design is easy to clean), electromagnetic flowmeters (suitable for conductive liquids such as purified water and water for injection, with high measurement accuracy and no pollution), vortex flowmeters (suitable for clean gases, low-viscosity medicinal liquids and other media, with simple structure and good stability), etc.; supporting valves include sanitary ball valves, butterfly valves, diaphragm valves, etc. Both these valves and flowmeters need to meet GMP standards, adopt a sanitary structure design with no dead ends and easy cleaning. Their combined use can achieve precise control and regulation of the flow of various media, ensuring the cleanliness and compliance of the drug production process. In addition, with the advancement of smart pharmaceuticals, intelligent sanitary flow measurement equipment with data traceability, real-time monitoring and remote calibration functions has been widely used, further improving the industry’s automated production level and quality control capabilities.