Lyophilization or freeze dying is a technique used to extract water from the food, biological samples and from many other products. This method is used so products stay stable when you store them at room temperature. It is essential that you dry any biological material before you store so that they remain stabilized for a longer period of time. This method is also used to preserve and ship such material.
In some cases lyophilization process can cause damage and some cellular loss or peptides activity, but this is also the best way to significantly reduce damage to any biological sample. Although lyophilized peptides such as bpc 157 uk are stable enough to store in room temperature for upto 2 months, it is wise to store them at 4°C to prolong their stability.
Equipment used for Lyophilization
To successfully conduct a lyophilization you need:
- A vacuum chamber with product shelves that can heat or cool containers and their contents.
- A refrigeration unit and a vacuum pump which controls are connected with the vacuum chamber.
You can place the samples in containers like glass vials that are placed on the vacuum chamber shelves.
Principles of Lyophilization
This method is based on “Sublimation”, a fairly simple principal of physics. The steps you need to conduct lyophilization are:
- Convert the water in the product to ice form via freezing.
- Convert the ice directly into water vapor by sublimation under vacuum.
- Removal of the water vapor.
- Once the sublimation process is complete, your product is freeze dried and ready to be removed from the machine.
Advantages of Lyophilization
The main advantages of lyophilization are such:
- Reduction of the damage and loss of activity in fragile or delicate material which are liable in heat.
- Complete and speedy rehydration.
- The possibility of clean and accurate dosing into product containers.
- Friable and porous structure.
Disadvantages / Risks of Lyophilization
- The equipment required for this process is about three times more costly than other method required.
- This process consumes 2 to 3 times more energy than other methods.
- This process requires around 24 hours for completion.
There can be several causes to this problem and we can use several approaches to solve it.
For once, if you are using a traditional method which involves manifold type dryer, then it is impossible for you to keep the tubes frozen, so naturally the acetonitrile will boil. You need to keep the tubes very cold to freeze the acetonitrile in water, even if you use shelf based dryer.
A simple way to solve this problem is to put a filter cap on the tube. It may still not solve the freezing issue so alternatively, choose another organic solvent that has a better potential of freezing. For example you can use ¼ dioxide then evaporate the acetonitrile and then lyophilize the water..
