Eisai Company, Limited

Micro Denshi Co., Ltd.

Washiro Honda

Katsumi Shimizu

Masahiko Nakazawa

Toshiyasu Ehara

Hisayoshi Matsumoto

Kenichi Iijima

Minoru Kudo

While a sealed vessel such as a vial having an inside plug such as a rubber stopper is conveyed, the sealed vessel is slanted by a slanting device until liquid medicine in the sealed vessel touches the inside plug. The sealed vessel is moved and simultaneously rotated by a rotating device while the vial is slanted. The liquid medicine in the sealed vessel is heated at a heating portion by heat energy such as infrared, fuel gas and microwave, so that the heated liquid medicine causes heat sterilization of the whole sealed vessel including the inside plug. Sterilization can be completely carried out by providing a heat-retaining portion, cooling portion and drying portion next to the heating portion. An infrared radiation thermometer is provided at the end of the heating portion to measure the temperature of the liquid medicine, so that the temperature of the liquid medicine in each sealed vessel may be controlled to a desired temperature.

Method of sterilizing sealed vial and apparatus for sealing the vial

A metallic diaphragm is provided within a pump chamber. This diaphragm is oscillated by a stem to Feed liquid medicine. The stem is provided with a plate and a movement of this plate, i.e., a stroke of the stem is limited by a pair of stoppers. Relative position of the paired stoppers at which they limit the stroke is adjusted by providing the paired stoppers with threads which are handed reversely to each other so that the paired stoppers are moved by amounts equal to each other during a change of the relative position. The stem carries thereon a piston which is, in turn, vertically movable within a cylinder chamber into which compressed air is introduced to oscillate the stem. A plurality of such pumps are successively connected one to another, stop valves are connected upstream as well as downstream off the respective pumps and a suck-back pump of the same construction as the liquid feed pump is connected immediately before a liquid filling device.

Liquid feed pump particularly used for liquid medicine and liquid feed

In the microwave oven of square waveguide type or coaxial tube type, the waveguide or inner conductor of the tube type is gradually declined from the inlet toward the outlet of the oven. A top slot is provided so that containers may be moved along the slot with their bottom portions being received in the oven and the contents heat sterilized. There is laid on a bottom surface of the oven a support rail for the bottoms of the containers, and this rail is gradually thickened from the inlet toward the outlet. More preferably, two or more such microwave ovens may be serially connected and the containers may be moved therethrough to heat sterilize medical fluids within each container in a stepwise manner.

Sterilizer for sealed container utilizing microwave

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Honjo, Japan

Washiro Honda