Closure Device for Sterile Container Handling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for sterilizing preforms and blow molded containers face challenges in preventing new microbial contamination during transport and handling, requiring extensive sterile environments and additional sterilization steps, which increase costs and complexity.
Innovation Solution
A closure device with a passage opening that seals the inner volume of workpieces, allowing for sterilization and protection from contamination by isolating the sterile space between the workpiece and the device, which is connected to the workpiece before sterilization and maintained until after filling, reducing the need for extensive sterile environments and allowing for aseptic handling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If preforms are sterilized and then transported through treatment stations, then the inner volume can be sterilized, but new microbial contamination occurs during transport and handling
Solution Approach 1:
A closure device acts as an intermediary between the sterilized preform inner volume and the external environment. The closure device with its sealed passage opening maintains the sterile barrier during transport and handling, preventing microbial contamination while allowing controlled access when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The closure device creates a flexible sealed enclosure around the passage opening, maintaining the sterile boundary through a removable barrier that flexes with the preform while preventing microbial ingress during transport.
2Reliability
If extensive sterile environments are created to prevent contamination, then sterility is maintained, but costs and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The sterile environment requirement is extracted from the entire transport and handling system and concentrated only at the critical interface where the closure device seals against the preform. This localized approach eliminates the need for extensive sterile environments while maintaining sterility where it matters most.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of maintaining uniform sterility throughout the entire handling system, the invention applies sterility maintenance locally at the passage opening through the closure device seal, allowing non-sterile conditions elsewhere in the system.
3Ease of operation
If treatment members are moved through passage openings in closure devices, then treatment can be applied to the inner volume, but microbial contamination risk increases
Solution Approach 1:
The passage opening in the closure device is designed to be dynamically openable and closable, allowing treatment members to pass through when needed while automatically sealing to maintain sterility when the treatment is complete, thus balancing accessibility with contamination prevention.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for handling at least sectionally sterile workpieces having a filiable inner volume, wherein the workpieces are each connected to a closure device, and by which the workpieces are guided through a plurality of treatment stations. One of the stations is a sterilization unit, wherein in at least one of the treatment stations, a treatment member is moved through a passage opening of the closure device all the way into the inner volume of the workpiece. The passage opening of the closure device is closed off by a closure element, which opens when the treatment member moves through and closes again upon removal of the member, wherein the closure device sealingly closes the inner volume of the workpiece with respect to an external region.