Sterility is essential for medical instruments, many pharmaceuticals, certain types of food and their packaging to protect the health of patients in hospitals and consumers.

Several methods exist to sterilize products, including heat, chemicals, radiation, and microfiltration for liquids and gases like air. For heat and moisture-sensitive products, special sterilization processes are required.

Hydrogen peroxide sterilization uses deep vacuum to maintain low temperatures throughout the process, known as low-temperature sterilization. This method is widely used for medical instruments such as endoscopes, with Pfeiffer developing dedicated vacuum pumps for reliable performance in this application.

The instruments are packed and placed into a sterilizer chamber. Several cycle programs are available, considering the varying complexity of the instruments' geometry. During a cycle, the chamber is evacuated (pre-conditioned), and several injections of H₂O₂ are performed. Due to the low pressure, the injected H₂O₂ evaporates immediately, ensuring high penetration of H₂O₂ into the instruments. Either plasma or a catalyzer trap, before or behind the vacuum pump, is used to break down residual H₂O₂ into water and oxygen.

The vacuum level varies during the process and includes several pump-down cycles. Pressure requirements can be as low as 0.1 hPa (mbar). High pumping performance is crucial to minimize cycle time and maximize throughput. Due to the injection of H₂O₂, the vacuum pumps must handle both H₂O₂ and water vapor. This is achieved by optimizing thermal management for our vacuum pumps.

Pfeiffer offers dedicated rotary vane vacuum pumps with high vapor capacity, specially designed for sterilization processes. In addition, we offer dry-compressing technology such as our multi-stage Roots vacuum pumps to minimize maintenance efforts.

Accurate pressure monitoring is possible thanks to our capacitance gauges. For their regular calibration, our HiCube Basic and HiCube Pro calibration systems are the ideal choice.