When setting up a manufacturing facility, you have to worry about everything from your raw material quality and supply chain logistics to setting in place standard operating procedures and training your workforce. These are only a few of the elements of your operation that will keep your mind buzzing with thoughts and ideas. If it’s a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant you are working towards, you will have all this and even more on your plate.
The agenda: Finding a heat exchanger manufacturer in India
We want to make things easier for you. In this article, we’re talking about heat exchangers. That piece of equipment which is ubiquitous in industrial spaces and even more so in the pharmaceutical industry. In India, the pharma market has its own contexts and nuances to keep in mind while finding an equipment manufacturer to design, fabricate, validate and maintain your equipment. So we’re going to talk specifically about how you can find the perfect heat exchanger manufacturer in India.
What is a heat exchanger? What are its applications?
As always, we start from the start – we’re tackling the questions of what a heat exchanger is, what it does, what it looks like, and why your pharmaceutical operation needs one in the first place.
India’s tropical heat sends us humans and other animals running for cover; imagine what that heat can do to pharma preparations that need to remain chemically stable and free of microbial growth. Though this problem isn’t unique to only India, it explains why heat exchangers are so crucial and why a heat exchanger manufacturer in India might be particularly adept at dealing with weather extremes.
Coming back to our main point – a heat exchanger is essentially an energy exchange system. In industrial settings, it is used to transfer heat between a source and a working fluid. It may be used for heating or cooling. For instance, electrical circuitry can generate a lot of heat, as can machines that operate for long hours; heat exchangers can be useful here to manage electrical heat wastage and to cool the systems to keep them working optimally. In industries like pharma, where specialised chemical or biochemical processes are carried out, environmental controls are critical; so here, heat exchangers can be used to maintain optimum temperatures to allow the processes to proceed as desired.
Thermal control mechanisms are necessary in a number of industries, including F&B, HVAC, petrochemicals, sewage treatment, and cosmetics. So in addition to pharma, heat exchangers have applications in all these industries. But unlike other industries, F&B, cosmetics and especially pharma have very high sanitary standards and extremely precise temperature control, so the work of heat exchangers becomes even more crucial.
These thermal management systems come in different shapes and sizes, but don’t be thrown off by the overwhelming variety. Some geometries, materials and sizes will be better suited to your operation than others; we’ll go over the details of this below. But in a broader market with more than one manufacturer of heat exchanger in India, you’re likely to find shell and tube, or double sheet tubular heat exchangers, the welded plate variety, plate and gasket, spiral or scraped surface heat exchangers. You will have to decide on not just a geometry, but also size and material of construction, say, a copper/nickel alloy vs a stainless steel. The decision of which geometry and material to choose will likely be a function of the properties of the fluids which will be involved in the heat transfer, both on the service side and the product side: conductivity, viscosity, specific heat capacity. You should also keep in mind inlet and outlet temperatures and pressures and process flow rate.
What’s so special about the Indian pharma market? Searching for an equipment manufacturer in the pharmacy of the world
How is identifying a manufacturer of heat exchanger in India different from doing the same thing anywhere else in the world? India is the pharmacy of the world. It supplies cheaper generics of expensive products to several countries; given the large demand for such generics, there are innumerable players in the pharma manufacturing market in India. This includes not just manufacturers of vaccines, biologics, oral solid dosages, or parenterals. It also encompasses manufacturers of APIs, makers of pharmaceutical machinery, and suppliers of excipients. The industry also finds support in the companies which provide repair, maintenance and other services for pharma systems.
When it comes to pharma machine manufacturers, your potential partners in the industry may provide instrumentation tools, high purity and process technology, lab equipment, plant design and engineering services, packaging machines and more. They serve the big names you read on the labels of your medicine by setting up purified water systems for them; maybe they fabricate and supply skid systems; they also manufacture compounding and storage vessels, bioreactors, the piping that carries pharma products from one machine to another, and automation systems that streamline production lines. Any manufacturer of heat exchanger in India would also fall in this category.
As the demand for India’s generics grows globally, new legislation is being designed to support the growth of the industry, like the Drugs, Medical Devices and Cosmetics Bill of 2023. Higher standards also affect every heat exchanger manufacturer in India, pushing them to achieve an even higher level of reliability, quality and safety.
For pharma product manufacturers overseas, sourcing equipment like heat exchangers can be an economical option – a manufacturer of heat exchanger in India is equipped to achieve the fine balance of cost and quality. But even for pharma manufacturers within India, local players are ideal – they offer a location advantage, which you can leverage not only to reduce logistics costs, but also to make the most of after-sales support like annual maintenance contracts, emergency repairs, or technical support.
Identifying your ideal heat exchanger manufacturer in India
With all the advantages that India brings to the pharma machine manufacturing market, it also brings a problem – the problem of choice. There are just far too many equipment partners out there, so how do you pick a manufacturer of heat exchanger in India?
Quality
Irrespective of geography, quality is key. Especially in pharma, there is absolutely no scope for error. And in a crowded market, there is no place for suboptimal quality. If you find a heat exchanger supplier who is willing to cut corners to bring the price down for you, run as far from them as you can! Find an equipment partner who values quality and safety above all else.
Experience and reputation
Years of experience and reputation in the market are great ways to assess not just the quality of a company’s manufacturing, but also how seriously they take their relationships in the pharma industry. Players like TSA who have clients enthusiastically vouching for them and promoting their work are likely to be the ideal heat exchanger manufacturer in India for you; their reputation precedes them.
Service promise
The work of an equipment partner is hardly over with a sale; in fact, the sale is only the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership which includes validation, factory acceptance testing, installation, annual maintenance of pharma equipment, and troubleshooting of issues. What’s a heat exchanger supplier who doesn’t provide an AMC?
We have more tips on how you can choose the best equipment partner for your heat exchanger here. We’ve also written a checklist for you to keep in mind as you purchase a heat exchanger. To conclude this article, we’re leaving you with a reminder to choose a heat exchanger manufacturer who has happy customers to speak highly of them. Choose a manufacturer who has years of experience. Choose a manufacturer who has kept up with industry advances in a post-pandemic world. Choose a manufacturer who accepts any and every challenge you throw at them. Choose TSA.
