Modular Design of Vacuum Systems for Lyophilization

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used to characterize lyophilization vacuum systems, but these simulations are typically unique to a specific geometry. This work presents a general method for predicting pressure performance by concatenating CFD and analytical models of individual components to create a vacuum system model. This method enables rapid exploration of vacuum system layouts to build custom geometry lyophilizers, which is particularly useful for novel continuous lyophilization systems. A vacuum chamber was built to validate this pressure prediction method. The simulations were then used to design a larger vacuum tunnel for continuous lyophilization that could achieve a target pressure below 10 Pa throughout its length. This tunnel was then built, and its performance matched the predictions of the component concatenation method. These results indicate that the component simulation and concatenation methods can be effectively used to predict the vacuum performance of custom geometry lyophilization systems.