Inert bottle caps customised to sparge, filter, and transfer highly aggressive fluids from storage bottles to the inlets of an automated chromatography instrument
Omnifit has customised its inert bottle caps to produce a system capable of sparging, filtering and transferring highly aggressive fluids from storage bottles to the inlets of an automated chromatography instrument.
The fluids have to be sparged and filtered to ensure that bubbles or particles do not block sensitive components in the instrument.
The key challenge for Omnifit was to design a fluid handling system, from inert materials, that could meet the instrument manufacturer's demanding performance specifications.
As a solution, Omnifit designed a customised PTFE bottle cap with one inlet and three outlets, controlled by a valve mounted in the cap.
The securing ring on the cap has a GL32 thread that rotates separately from the core, preventing the PTFE tubing from being twisted when the cap is screwed onto the bottle.
The tubing has a combined filter and sparger (10µm pore size) mounted at the bottom of the bottle for de-aeration and particle removal.
Omnifit's unique gripper fittings connect the tubing to the instrument; these grippers offer an all-PTFE connection for inertness, and a hand-tight connection rated up to 1000psi.
Overall dimensions of the customised bottle caps are 40mm x 65mm.
The initial prototypes were presented to the instrument manufacturer as e-drawings and animated CAD models.
These provided highly accurate information for assessment by the customer and also dramatically reduced the lead-time to the production of prototypes.
Omnifit has been a specialist designer and manufacturer of inert fluidic components for over 30 years.
Its custom products for instrument manufacturers include bottle caps, manual and electric valves, fittings, tubing sets and chromatography columns.
When designs are approved, Omnifit manufactures to meet the customer's supply chain requirements for scheduled, Kanban or JIT delivery.
