Use This Tech, Transform Science: Flow Meters w/ Bethany Silva

Bethany Silva: 0:00

When I actually started out 20 years ago, I was actually in pharmaceutical distribution. And though I loved being with medicine and working with patients in that kind of aspect, I struggled with that side of it. I really wanted to understand.

Harsh Thakkar: 0:13

What's up everybody, this is harsh from qualtivate.com. And you're listening to the life sciences 360 podcast. On this show, I chat with industry experts and thought leaders to learn about their stories, ideas and insights, and how their role helps bring new therapies to patients. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in. All right, we're live. So I have to tell you this something right off right? When I first got this request that this person wants to be a guest, and they want to talk about the flow of technology and single flow meters. I have no idea what this stuff is right. I work in quality. I work in software, but I wanted to bring this person on and learn from them. So here we are. So today's guest is Bethany Silva. She is the life sciences industry manager at Endress+Hauser, welcome to the show.

Bethany Silva: 1:02

Thank you harsh. I appreciate the invite.

Harsh Thakkar: 1:05

Yeah so, after that very innocent intro, I want to set the stage by just asking you what can you explain how this single flow meter works?

Bethany Silva: 1:17

Yeah. So in traditional biologics, manufacturing flow is a critical process parameter, it's something that helps the control of the process and helps do additions and helps with the control strategy. In traditional stainless, we have a lot of cool technologies that we can use for that. But in single use, when a customer is starting to implement single use type of process systems, they struggle with the same type of technologies that they can utilize in stainless. So Endress+Hauser has developed a single use Flow Meter, that is based on the Coriolis principle of technology for flow. So it's taking something that we already utilized in a very robust, repeatable process and stainless and bringing that same technology into single use with a customer that may be looking at using that for their process instead.

Harsh Thakkar: 2:03

okay, and and just to double click on that question, so what, what is this Coriolis type flow meter, and what other types are out there that companies use?

Bethany Silva: 2:15

Yeah, so there's a lot of different types of flow technology, somebody could use to measure flow, some of them have their pros and cons. So we have electromagnetic, which we call mag meter, that works very well, it's in line. So there's no need to add anything on to the to the pipe itself. But it also requires conductive type of fluids. So the fluid itself has to have some type of conductive capacities to it. So that has its limitations, especially in pharmaceuticals, because a lot of our especially like our water, water for injection doesn't have a conductive liquid to it. So we then have to look at other technologies, we have ultrasonic that we can utilize as well, but that is also dependent on the fluid. So it's very fluid dependent, where Coriolis is actually utilizing the excitations of the vibrations of a tube. And those are being detected with coil. So that actually is completely independent of the liquids. So it doesn't matter if it's water, if it's got solids, or if it's got air bubbles or anything like that. So the Coriolis tends to be the more reliable technology to use for for biologics and pharmaceutical manufacturing. So that's the one that we kind of mainstay in the stainless, it just hasn't really had the ability to be implemented in single use.

Harsh Thakkar: 3:29

okay. And typically, for a life science or biotech company, again, you can give me some specific numbers. Or if you don't want, you can just give a ballpark. But how many of these Flow Meters do they typically need? And what's the cost of implementing one taking into account qualification and calibration or whatever needs to happen to put it into production use?

Bethany Silva: 3:54

Yeah, so it'd be difficult to give an exact number. But because every train system, every suite has multiple scans with multiple meters on there. So if you took like a traditional chromatography system that's in downstream, there's probably anywhere between three and six Coriolis flow meters on that system. And those tend to be very low flow in flow is very critical on the chromatography systems. But a lot of customers will have multiple chromatography systems just in their one production line. So it's hard to give an exact number but it can be one production line could have 30 Coriolis flow meters on there. And so the costs of them, I mean, it's once the the the sensor itself is actually installed. You still have to do the maintenance the calibrations to it metrology has to pull it and then there's usually a rig of flow rate that these were set up to, and then they're calibrated to that flow rig. So there's a lot of manual maintenance that can happen with the with the flow meters. But one thing that we've implemented in both our stainless interesting to use Coriolis Flow Meters are something that we call a verification. And so that's an inline almost like a predictive maintenance type. above have technology that allows us to check the instruments to make sure that they're still at the same same quality that they did when they left the factory or when they were last calibrated. So it gives us some kind of insurance in between the calibration points, which is nice because it's all traceable and can be can be brought back to a nice traceable a reference.

Harsh Thakkar: 5:20

Okay, okay, great. And as as I was researching on this topic, so I know there's other instrumentation and Process Automation companies that are making similar type of Coriolis flow meters, and they have different pros and cons. So what set what separates the the one that Endress+Hauser makes? Like, what are some of the product features that separate it from the others?

Bethany Silva: 5:45

Yeah, so one of the big key things is that there are lots of different technologies, as I mentioned. So there are other types of single use Flow Meters, like the ultrasonics. And there's a clamp on style and inline, and they have a fit for purpose. So there's good, good applications for them as well, they're not as accurate. So the accuracy level is more like plus or minus 2%, plus or minus 5%, with Coriolis unit data, point 0.5% accuracy. So in that real critical type of applications, when your flow accuracy is critical to that application, then we want to use something like Coriolis. So there are only one other Coriolis flow meter that's in single use that I'm aware of. And that one actually uses single use plastic tubes. And unfortunately, Coriolis doesn't work very well with plastic. It's really actually yeah, it's actually pretty steel dependent because of the vibrations that are are needed. When a fluid is in the plastic like a peak, it actually absorbs some of that fluid, and it no longer excites the same way. So we have designed ours to actually have stainless tubes, even though they're single use, we still utilize stainless steel 360 Now as the the tubing to make sure that the Coriolis principle is still still usable. So that's one thing that differentiates us as we are the only ones that have a Coriolis, that's actually made of steel, which is Coriolis principle. The other big differentiator is that being able to do those verifications, right now, when we go into single use, traditional stainless steel sensors tend to have calibrations done on regular intervals. So that was designed based on criticality of that measurement point. So somebody may have said, Okay, every six months, this meter needs to be calibrated. When you're doing single use, there is no really way to calibrate in the field because you can't break the sterile boundary. And it's implemented in a complete assembly, what we've done is implemented that verification so that we can verify and guarantee that the calibration that was done at the factory, is now still good in the field. So it's an actual ability to use the calibration that was given at the factory. And we have a whole camera system installed in the sensor so that it actually uploads all the factory calibrations into the transmitter, they runs that verification, it gives the green light that everything is good or or fail if the if things have been damaged in shipment or while that while it was in storage. So there's a lot of insurance that goes on with having this verification process built into our into our sensors.

Harsh Thakkar: 8:07

Interesting. When when you were talking to this is this is really off topic, right? So when you were talking about the plastic and steel comparison, it reminded me of that scene from from Breaking Bad where I don't know if you watch that show or heard about it. Oh, I have. Years ago. So it's like, there's this theme. I don't really exactly remember. But it's like Walter White is telling Jesse to go and get like a storage tote or something. And it's like, he tells him exactly what type of plastic it needs to be and what logo at the bottom chemistry and engineering is beautiful, right? Like people who know it, they know exactly what works. And he doesn't get it. And he whatever he's asked to do, he doesn't get that tote. And he instead puts all the stuff that he wants to decompose or whatever he was doing. He puts it in his bathtub. And that was a complete no no. Because that chemical would go through all the entire bathtub. And when he Walter comes to his house, he sees a big hole. And he's like I told you to get that specific plastic, because that's the one it will not react with anything else it will go right through. Right. So anyways, you are talking about the plastic and steel. It's like small things like that. I don't know, right? I mean, but it makes a lot of difference to whoever's designing that instrument or material.

Bethany Silva: 9:35

Yeah, yeah, we're seeing it just even on the stainless steel, we're seeing a lot of like, what we call salty buffers, like high high concentrated buffers, and they require even more aggressive resistant type of materials than 360. Now so a lot of times we're seeing like C 22. And the the Haskell is a exotic alloys come into play because they're the only thing that can withstand a lot of those really high intensity offer concentrations. So we're seeing Like all the materials, it's coming into a very important, and particularly to the, to the flow meters, because they are in contact with but you have to be very considerate of what you're using.

Harsh Thakkar: 10:10

Okay, and if you were to look at your portfolio of clients or customers who are using these Flow Meters like, is it mostly Life Sciences? Or is it like other industries that are also benefiting from it?

Bethany Silva: 10:23

Yeah, yeah. So Endress+Hauser does support all seven major industries. There's a lot of different industries in the industrial market, more of like the chemical oil and gas, there's food and beverage, water, wastewater, power and energy and then life sciences. So the Coriolis fits in most of those industries of pharmaceuticals manufacturers have seen the most advantages of using the Coriolis sometimes it's a little bit less, I said, but that conductive requirement for electronic electromagnetic mag meters, then that may be a better fit for some of those industries. So it depends on the flow meter type, the technology, we do offer different technologies for all those different industries. But this single use Flow Meter, really, it's meant for the biologics, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. We're the only ones that have the criticality of the CIP and SIP systems in the cleaning validation that's required that would enable single use to make sense there are some other industries that are interested in looking at whether single use makes sense for them. But this particular flow meter, that's what it's really geared towards.

Harsh Thakkar: 11:24

Okay, and then when so, so when your your team or the the other people in your company are implementing or installing these kind of flow meters for different industries. So how does it look? Let's say you're working with a big pharma like Pfizer, or a big food and beverage or company like Nestle and a gas oil and gas company like Chevron? How is that implementation different for all three of them? Like, it sounds like the product is the same, just how it fits into that manufacturing, or whatever layout where these Flow Meters are used? Have you seen any, like different difference in approaches of how these are used or fitted?

Bethany Silva: 12:06

Yeah, I mean, especially with things like oil and gas, they're, they're so aggressive in there, they're much larger. So But you're right, the technologies are pretty much going to be the same, we're going to use these kind of core four or five different though the mag meters, the Coriolis, we do have a vortex meter and the ultrasonic, there's, there's a couple others, but those are kind of the mainstay type of technologies that you would utilize across all those industries. But how they get utilized the regulations that are required. Obviously, with chemical, there's a lot more safety that we follow a lot more of the SIL aspect of it. Same thing with oil and gas, there's a lot of safety aspects built into the meter. With life sciences. Obviously, it's a lot more on our surface finish and our compatibility with 360. Now, how can you utilize that adhering to the asthma VBE requirements, it there's a lot of different regulations around each industry that we have to follow and comply with. But each one's technology is pretty much going to be the same. It's just how it actually gets integrated. But I'll tell you, those oil and gas meters can get quite big. And life science can get quite small.

Harsh Thakkar: 13:05

Yep. Yeah. So in terms of the advancements, let's say in the flow technology, space, what are some of the things that if you can share without sharing too much of confidential stuff, but what are some of the things that Endress+Hauser is kind of working on? To continue being a leader in that flow technology space, any trends or any product developments that you're working on that you're excited about?

Bethany Silva: 13:32

Yeah, so the single use being able to offer sensors that are as robust and reliable as we were expecting, and stainless and bring that to the single use world. That is something that we're definitely focused on, we're going to expand on that we're going to bring other types of technologies because Endress+Hauser does more than just flow, we do level and pressure, temperature liquid analytics. So we'll continue to expand on the instrumentation that we bring into the single use offering, one of the aspects that we focus a lot on is being able to move into more predictive maintenance. So that idea of let's let's make these smart sensors, let the sensor tell us when it's starting to degrade, let the sit instead of just this kind of time based preventative maintenance type of thought process when we're when we're looking at how we maintain and best support them. So moving more into those predictive maintenance, smart sensors, that's another focus for Endress and also looking at the ability to do multi parameters out of the sensors. So like with our flow with Coriolis, we can actually get density, we can get temperature, we can get mass flow. There's a couple different types of measurements that we can get out of that same one meter. And we're looking at whether that's can be even further expanded upon, can we bring additional things into one sensor so that the customer has maybe one sensor that can do multiple and then also looking at soft sensors? Soft sensors are basically a hard sensor that has a software built into it that can correlate the data so it doesn't always have to do that? Yeah. So that direct measurement, we can actually do more indirect measurements and predictive type of measurements. So that will help play into the AI world as we look into data analytics, and how much can we actually get from each one of these sensor? How much information can we gather from this one measurement point? So those are the things that we're looking for in the future to kind of keep up with the trends and, and help enable a lot of this is digital pharma 4.0 type of initiatives.

Harsh Thakkar: 15:26

Yeah, exactly. Because that's, that's where when you mentioned about having that data in real time, so you're, you're not you're not being reactive, you're being proactive with the predictive analytics, or just watching the trends from that data collection. Right. And that's, that's a lot of instrument and Process Automation efforts are heading in that direction from day one. Because manual logbooks and loading of data and copy pasting has its own slew of data integrity issues that come with it. So having an instrument that has this capability of getting that data transferred to a computer or somewhere and then analyzing that on top of it with like, reporting capabilities. That's huge. Yeah,

Bethany Silva: 16:12

yeah, the enabling that the ability to also connecting to cloud. So that's another aspect that we're looking at is making sure that we are able to connect it to the cloud, because a lot of that analysis is actually going to be done in cloud. It's, it's sometimes not even done in real hardware anymore.

Harsh Thakkar: 16:27

So you you've had an amazing career in this industry, in the STEM field as a successful career. So for other What advice would you have for other women who are also aspiring to enter and thrive in the sector and maybe be in a position like you?

Bethany Silva: 16:46

yeah, I started out really looking at liquid analytics, the traditional PH, and DO types of technologies, very proven, already established, and then started to move into like capacitance and really found a passion for supporting customers and what their initiatives were for what we call the lab to process, process development, they developed a product, and now they gotta get it into mass production. And that scale up really, it just, it just rung the bell for me, I just found that that was where I felt the most passionate that I felt like I could actually support customers, I understood what their initiative was, I understood how to try to get them to that initiative. So I think for for anybody looking to aspire into this type of field, it's really about just finding that thing that kind of lights you up, it sounds simple. But if you can find that thing that that kind of gives you that passion and that momentum, because there gonna be a lot of days that are difficult to get through. But that passion that that curiosity that you naturally have for something that will persevere and get you through. So yep, that would be very recommendation, definitely look for those things that that you get excited about.

Harsh Thakkar: 17:50

Right. And a lot of us we don't we don't do that part, right. Because of whatever reasons, right? We have a job, but we don't we probably know that we don't like it, but we just don't want to go to that process of finding something else. But ultimately, like every person, I've asked this question to has said other things, but they've always said what you just said is like, Hey, if you're not getting like that energy from doing what you're doing, then you should just do something else. Because if you're just yeah, it takes it takes a lot of effort to find that so for people like you who found it, like it's, it's amazing, but yeah, that's a great point.

Bethany Silva: 18:28

Yeah, oh, love the world distribution. I was on the distributor and, and though I loved being with medicine and working with with patients and that kind of aspect. I struggled with that side of it, I really wanted to understand the the manufacturing side of it, the development side of it. So I was I was I kind of knew I was in the wrong spot. A lot of people will, like you said, they'll just accept that that's kind of good enough. But if they can push themselves to try and find something that they can get excited about every day. I think in the long run, it makes everybody more successful.

Harsh Thakkar: 18:58

Yeah, listen, I know you you're extremely busy and Endress+Hauser is from what I've researched. It's a huge organization, you are in a very key role for managing this life sciences industry division. So I want to ask you one last question before we wrap this up is what's your personal leadership philosophy? Like how do you approach leadership within your team or within collaborating with other industry partners?

Bethany Silva: 19:25

Yeah, I think a lot of this is built off trust, whether it's working with industry collaborators, or or the life science team here at Endress+Hauser or other teammates, when you can trust that you can put faith in what others can do and build that competency that you establish for yourself so that other people can trust you. I think that's key. It also empowers everybody, right? So they feel a sense of responsibility to each other, but if we can be supportive of each other and trust each other, whether it's working with industry, collaborators, or teammates, I think that is the basis of of leading really is building that trust, building that empowerment?

Harsh Thakkar: 20:05

Yeah, I heard I read this quote somewhere, which is like trust is the ultimate currency in any relationship. So I think that sounds like a good summary of your answer.

Bethany Silva: 20:16

Yes, yes, very much.

Harsh Thakkar: 20:18

Thank you. Thank you, Bethany. It was really great talking to you. And I wish you all the success with everything you're doing in the company and all the projects you're working on. Thank you for your time.

Bethany Silva: 20:28

Thank you harsh. It's been great talking to you as well. Thank you for having me.

Harsh Thakkar: 20:32

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.