Modeling a Thermal Shipper to Optimize a Global Pharmaceutical Cold Chain
Situation & Challenges
A leading pharmaceutical manufacturer relied on a robust cold chain to ensure its bulk and finished drug products maintain quality and integrity during transportation worldwide. The company needed assurance that a refrigerated parcel container used by one of its global affiliates was up to the challenge. This pharmaceutical manufacturer asked BlueRidge Life Sciences to evaluate the thermal shipper’s performance and, if necessary, identify improvements or consider alternatives.
Why BlueRidge Life Sciences
BlueRidge Life Sciences is a recognized leader in biopharmaceutical cold chain engineering, with a team of multi-disciplinary engineering experts and in-depth experience optimizing any cold chain for innovative,fragile, and controlled temperature drug products.
Our team is highly experienced in assessing the effects of environmental hazards on drug products in transit and evaluating thermal shippers against expected environmenta hazards—capabilities that proved vital to this engagement. Our engineers drew on their success helping pharmaceutical and biotech companies evaluate, select, and enhance thermal shippers to protect their controlled temperature drugs from damage during transportation.
Project Objectives
The project involved leveraging both the available data about the refrigerated parcel container and BlueRidge Life Sciences’ in-depth cold chain expertise and extensive experience conducting chamber testing and thermal modeling.
BlueRidge Life Sciences was tasked with:
Conducting chamber testing on the refrigerated parcel container by exposing it to the expected temperature profile
Conducting an engineering evaluation of the container’s performance for the intended shipping route
Recommending container improvements or suitable alternative solutions, in the event the container did not meet the performance criteria
Developing a computer thermal model that could accurately predict the container’s performance, as well as creating a protocol for additional testing to calibrate the model
Using the thermal model to evaluate new or improved thermal packaging solutions.
The Solution
BlueRidge Life Sciences applied our Cold Chain Engineering™ capabilities and thermal shipper testing experience to evaluate the refrigerated packaging solution used by the company’s global affiliate, assessing its ability to perform sufficiently under expected conditions.
The Engineering Consulting Solutions project included these critical activities and deliverables:
Developed temperature profiles based on historical weather data to appropriately challenge the affiliate’s refrigerated container for expected conditions in transit
Exposed the containers to the thermal profile generated within a thermal chamber and evaluated their performance
Used the chamber testing data to generate a working thermal model of the container, calibrated following established protocols (in the event the container did not meet temperature or duration requirements)
Conducted additional chamber testing to calibrate the container model further, altering it in various ways to test potential improvements
Reported on proposed improvements to the container to meet the performance criteria, if needed
The Results
Once the chamber tests revealed that the container in its current state would not meet the temperature or duration requirements, BlueRidge Life Sciences developed a computer thermal model to evaluate various improvements. Proposed enhancements included thicker walls or different phase change materials to improve the container’s performance under the expected conditions. The pharmaceutical manufacturer is now evaluating BlueRidge Life Sciences’ recommendations, while we continues to enhance the computer model as needed.
