Low Volume Gas Analysis (LVGA)
Ceram has developed a technique called Low Volume Gas Analysis (LVGA). Used to identify gases, vapours or residues in packaging, LVGA can help pharmaceutical manufacturers to ensure that their gas flush systems are functioning correctly and that contaminants that cause process problems or product failures are eliminated.
Conventional residual gas analysis requires a certain minimum gas volume to be presented for mass spectrometric analysis. Below 1-5 mL of gas does not allow sufficient accuracy for good quantitative composition determinations to be made for multi-component gas mixtures, particularly where the component of interest may only be present in trace amounts. For sealed environments, and particularly for evacuated sealed environments, there is the added complication of sampling the container. Ceram’s Low Volume Gas Analysis methodology overcomes both these difficulties by breaking the sealed container inside the analysis instrument and feeding the contents directly to the mass analyser.
LVGA is a critical analytical tool for pharmaceuticals, where moisture concentration can cause a number of long-term issues such as reliability, corrosion, fogging and leakage.
