Reduce humidity of cold room and warehouse for storage of medicines

Are you dealing with storing and transportation of medicines? If so you may have faced the problems of excess humidity. The medicines have to be stored below a humidity level as specified by the manufacturer of the respective medicine (Generally below 65%). Usually, the medicines are stored in cold rooms and warehouses. The cold rooms are maintained between  2 to 8 Degree Centigrade and the warehouse is maintained between 15 and 25 Degree Centigrade.

The humidity has to be normally maintained below 60-65 % at all times for medicine storage purpose. Have you tested your humidity levels and found to be high? If so please read on.

What are the factors affecting the humidity levels?

Would  you be interested in reducing the humidity? First of all, you would like to know more about the reasons for high humidity.

Warehouse

Ambient conditions affect humidity inside a warehouse. The  outside temperature in the middle east countries soars up to 55°C in the summer season. The external atmosphere will have a certain amount of humidity. The temperature inside the warehouse is much lower than the external temperature. Usually, it is maintained at around 25°C. Hence, moisture always has a tendency to get into the lower temperature of the warehouse from the external air, thus increasing humidity levels.

Cold room

Customers normally construct cold rooms inside a warehouse. The cold room has a low temperature between 2 to 8°C. Hence moisture from the outside air gets easily attracted into the cold room very quickly. For this reason, the humidity inside a cold room goes up to 80-90% or sometimes even up to 99%.

How to find out present humidity levels?

Have you analyzed your present humidity levels? That is the first step to do.

Prior to taking corrective actions, you have to find out present humidity levels inside your cold room or warehouse. In order to do so, you may place a temperature and humidity data logger inside the area and start recording. Let the recording happen for couple of days including holidays. It is ideal that a similar logger is placed outside the monitoring area. This is to facilitate comparison of internal variations with respect to external variations. In the case of the cold room, please place a data logger inside the warehouse somewhere near to the door of the cold room. In the case of warehouse, you can keep the data logger outside the warehouse so that the external humidity and temperature can be measured. After a week, you may download the data and variations in humidity and relation to the external conditions can be analysed.

How to reduce humidity of medicine storage areas, warehouse, rooms etc.?

Now you have a clear idea of the humidity conditions and need to take corrective actions if it exceeds your permitted levels through one or both of the below methods:

1. Provide air curtains – Air curtains are electrical fans which will generate an airflow at the door thus reducing the flow of external air into your storage area.
2. Automate the air curtains – The air curtains can be manual which means the operator has to switch on the air curtain when he opens the door. It is preferable to automate the air curtain, so that as soon as he opens the door, the air curtain operates automatically.When he closes the door the air curtain switches off automatically.
3. Install Dehumidifiers – De-humidifiers are electrical equipment for absorbing atmospheric moisture. This is the most efficient means to forcefully reduce the humidity.

What are types of Dehumidifiers for Cold rooms and warehouse for storage of medicine?

There are two types of de-humidifiers which can be used based on the area of application:

a. Desiccant type rotary dehumidifiers

This operates using silica gel desiccants which absorb the moisture from the air. The intake air contains moisture which goes through the desiccant. The desiccant absorbs the moisture and the output air will be dry air. There are different models which can operate in ambient conditions of -15°C onwards. As the cold room temperature is normally around 5°C, we prefer to use these type of dehumidifiers for cold rooms.

b. Condensing type dehumidifier

Condensing type dehumidifiers operate by the principle of condensing the moisture and converting into water. The water will then be drained automatically or pumped through an automatic pump connected to the de-humidifier. Such type of dehumidifiers are for atmospheric temperature above 10°C and hence can be used for warehouses.

How to decide capacity and type of dehumidifers?

In order to decide the capacity of dehumidifiers, we would require the following  details:

1. Dimensions of the area.
2. Present Temperature & humidity conditions preferably recorded data.
3. Details of cooling units (HVAC) presently installed.
4. Desired humidity level.

We are supplying de-humidifies manufactured by Trotec, Germany for various industrial and commercial purposes.

Types of de-humidifiers by Trotec, Germany:

Please click the following links for other types of dehumidifiers by Trotec, Germany

Dehumidifiers – Home Page

Vacker UAE supplies various dehumidifiers in Dubai, Abudhabi, Sharjah and other emirates of United Arab Emirates. Also, we supply dehumidifiers in all other Middle East countries covering Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

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