For more than 40 years, Perma Pure has been helping medical device manufacturers to develop accurate breath analysis equipment that controls moisture. Their patented Nafion tubing provides dependable moisture removal in a variety of medical applications, enabling accurate analysis and protection of sensing mechanisms. Let’s take a look at the reasons why the medical industry uses Nafion tubing, what Nafion tubing is and the benefits it offers, not just to the pharmaceutical and medical industries, but others too.
What is Nafion tubing?
Nafion is a remarkable polymer that has a unique ability to transfer moisture from one side of the membrane to the other. Unlike a porous membrane that depends on the physical size of molecules, Nafion’s selectivity is based on chemical reactivity. This makes it ideal for the removal of water vapour from breath samples prior or to humidify therapeutic gases.
How does Nafion work?
Nafion polymer was invented by Walther Groth in the 1960s and is now used in tubing to benefit the medical industry. Nafion polymer transfers water molecules from one side of the membrane to the other by a first order kinetic reaction. This process is based on chemical reactivity, not the size of the molecule, which makes Nafion unlike other porous membranes. Nafion is very effective at transporting only water while keeping the other gasses separated. This gives it a number of benefits that cannot be found in other membranes.
Where is Nafion tubing used?
Nafion tubing is used in a range of applications across a number of industries, most relevantly the medicinal industry.. Most commonly it is used in respiratory treatment and monitoring which means it’s become more important than ever during the pandemic, when we have had hundreds of thousands of people using respirators as they suffered from Covid-19.
Hospital-acquired pneumonia and other infections are always a risk during respiratory treatment and monitoring. Nafion tubing works to prevent bacterial contamination from passing through the material keeping patients and medical staff safe from potentially being contaminated. Again, this has been an invaluable benefit during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Advantages of Nafion tubing
There are a number of advantages of Nafion tubing. Let’s take a look at each one in turn:
It is biocompatible
When a material is biocompatible, this means that it’s not harmful or toxic to living tissue. This makes it the perfect material to use in a medicinal environment. Medical staff do not need to worry that this product will be harmful to their patients or cause them serious injury.
Nafion tubing from Perma Pure meets ISO10993-5 & -10 standards for dermal sensitisation, primary skin irritation and cytotoxicity.
It will increase accuracy of your samples
Accuracy is vitally important when it comes to testing medical samples – there can be no room for errors. Moisture within a gas sample can affect the sample’s accuracy, however by using a dryer containing nafion tubing, the moisture can be extracted, without removing analytes. This will lead to better results when analysing medical samples in the laboratory.
It improves monitoring
Nafion tubing dryers help improve monitoring by increasing accuracy and helping to protect the sensors within the analysis equipment from corrosion. Corrosion is a big cost to industries, and by using Nafion tubing, they can avoid this extra spend which reduces efficiency and leads to downtime.
It has antimicrobial properties
Perma Pure Nafion tubing is antimicrobial in nature and creates a zone of inhibition around itself where microorganisms simply will not grow.
Who is Perma Pure?
Perma Pure is a leading manufacturer of gas conditioning products including dryers, humidifiers, filters, coalescers, specialty scrubbers and complete sampling systems. They sell these products worldwide for use in medical, industrial and scientific applications. Founded in 1972, Perma Pure has nearly fifty years of experience in gas conditioning and is the sole manufacturer of Nafion tubing.
Where can you buy Nafion tubing?
Perma Pure is the manufacturer of Nafion tubing but works with hundreds of suppliers to get these products sent directly to your application. One such supplier of these products is Fluid Controls Ltd who supply a range of pressure control products and solutions for fluidic industries.
If you need further information on Nafion tubing or their other pressure control products, be sure to get in touch with them today.
Punit 
Krishan Jangir