Rinsing Recommendations for Membrane Filters and Identification of Rinsables

Filtration is universally used in biopharmaceutical processing. For example, in upstream processing for sterilizing-grade filtration of cell culture media or in various downstream operations, such as clarification, filtration of intermediates, and in critical final filling applications. It is well known that filtration devices can release a certain level of organic compounds within the first filtrate fractions, which can be measured as total organic carbon (TOC). The compounds are primarily released from the surface of its construction materials. This includes typical polymer constituents that migrate from the material, as well as compounds which are formed during sterilization by irradiation. The level of compounds present on a surface is reduced significantly during rinsing of filters. Therefore, these can be defined as “rinsables”. A deeper understanding of filter rinsing characteristics and chemical composition of a rinse solution is relevant for process design and risk mitigation, especially in high-risk applications. This publication provides the analytical and mathematical tools to measure and evaluate rinsing curves obtained from different sterilizing-grade membrane filter capsules. Total organic carbon (TOC) content, high-resolution mass spectrometry, ion chromatography, and headspace GC-MS were used to determine the composition of rinsing fractions and to follow the course of the rinsing curve. The required, filter-specific parameters Bulk Volume per Surface area (BVS) and Rinsing Volume per Surface area (RVS) are introduced. They are used for calculating minimum bulk and rinsing volumes of filters that lead to TOC concentrations below the threshold of 500 µg/L for Water for Injection. Three relevant filtration cases in biopharmaceutical manufacturing are discussed together with best practices for evaluation and use of BVS and RVS parameters. Results of a verification test are presented and discussed.