Characterization of peristaltic pumps and application to fill & finish operations: Part I.

Peristaltic pumps are widely used in fill and finish operations for parenteral drugs, especially biologics. These pumps are believed to work as volumetric pumps and to deliver a constant flow rate. However, this is only true within a limited range of backpressure. In this article, we show that if the backpressure exceeds a certain threshold, which depends on the pump tuning, the flow decreases progressively until it completely vanishes at a certain backpressure. We demonstrate that this behavior may have practical consequences on the various operations, including the filtration of biologic solutions and the filling accuracy especially for viscous solutions.