Protect Your Sterilizer & Keep Your OR Running With SterilSource

For sterile processing teams at healthcare facilities, providing purified water for their autoclave has historically meant accepting tradeoffs around floor space, budget, and throughput. Ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and other, smaller healthcare facilities have felt this most acutely, with many having to choose between installing a bulky reverse osmosis (RO) system that takes up significant space or going without one and accepting the risks to patient safety, compliance, and equipment longevity.

That’s why we’re proud to launch SterilSource, a compact, wall-mounted water purification system engineered to support the sterile processing needs of small healthcare facilities.

The Water Quality Challenge in Healthcare Sterile Processing

Water quality is one of the most consequential variables in healthcare sterile processing, with implications that span:

• Regulatory compliance: AAMI/ANSI ST108 defines minimum water quality requirements across utility water, critical water, and steam, each with its own testing cadence. ST108 is a formal, enforceable standard now referenced by accreditation bodies, including The Joint Commission. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also ties accreditation status to reimbursement eligibility. Healthcare facilities that can’t demonstrate compliance with ST108 during a survey could face citations with downstream implications for both reimbursement and operational standing.
• Patient safety: Inadequately treated water can transfer dissolved minerals, bacteria, and endotoxins onto surgical instruments and instrument wraps during cleaning, rinsing, and sterilization. Even trace levels of these contaminants in feedwater put patients at risk of post-operative infection and can compromise outcomes from procedures.
• Workflow continuity: Sterile processing depends on water being available when surgical schedules demand it. Conventional RO systems pre-make and store water in large bladder tanks. If a system goes down, or the tank isn’t refilled by morning, it delays sterilization cycles and surgical procedures, which can lead to patient dissatisfaction and, longer term, loss of business. For ASCs and other smaller facilities operating on margins that depend on consistent case throughput, even occasional disruptions of this kind can threaten the financial viability of the practice itself.
• Equipment longevity: Minerals in untreated feedwater deposit on steam generator heating elements as scale, which reduces their thermal efficiency and can, eventually, compromise element function. Chlorides, silica, and dissolved metals can also corrode piping, valves, and sensors. Sodium, chlorides, and other contaminants reduce sterilizer vessel longevity by accelerating stress corrosion cracking of chamber and jacket materials. Inadequate water quality can also lead to failed steam condensate testing under ST108. Taken as a whole, this can lead to more frequent service calls, unplanned downtime, voided warranties, and capital equipment retired well before its time.

Each of these concerns points to the same conclusion: Healthcare facilities need a water purification system designed for the demands of their industry rather than adapted from a general-purpose RO.

What Sets SterilSource Apart

SterilSource combines a compact footprint with the throughput of a much larger system, and has features designed to meet the needs of high-volume sterile processing departments (SPDs):

• Three configurations to match your application: SterilSource ships in three configurations — RO, RO/DI, and RO/DI + ST108 — each engineered for a specific type of steam generator and water quality requirement.
  
• Compact, wall-mounted design: The entire system is built on a marine-grade HDPE backing board with integrated mounting brackets. The brackets easily mount directly to drywall studs or concrete, with mounting brackets sized for 16” on-center stud spacing. SterilSource’s slim, wall-mounted profile means it can fit in even the smallest sterile processing areas, often beside the autoclave itself, rather than claim dedicated equipment room space.
• Parallel filtration through dual RO membranes: SterilSource doubles the carbon, anti-scalant, and RO membrane stages of a conventional system, with both filtration paths working in parallel. These specially designed membranes allow for up to four times the water output of most single-membrane systems — enough throughput to support continuous sterile processing without a large pre-fill storage tank.
• On-demand water generation: The 15-gallon sanitary tank fills at one gallon per minute, refilling completely in just 15 minutes. Compared to conventional RO systems with bladder tank storage that can take 90 minutes or more to refill, SterilSource generates water as your schedule demands it, rather than the other way around.
• Cone-bottom sanitary tank: Unlike bladder tank systems, whose internal membranes are notoriously difficult to sanitize, SterilSource’s cone-bottom tank drains fully and is easy to clean.
• Continuous recirculation loop: With the RO/DI + ST108 configuration, water in the storage tank cycles continuously through a bacteria/endotoxin filter, even when the system isn’t actively dispensing water, to keep stagnation and biofilm formation in check between cycles.
• Onboard conductivity monitoring: A conductivity monitor comes standard on every configuration, alerting your team to when water quality drifts out of spec, rather than leaving filter changes to a fixed schedule. Most conventional RO systems lack this capability, which often leads to facilities either changing filters too early or running them past their useful life.

On SterilSource & ST108 Compliance

There’s a common misconception that ST108 requires healthcare facilities to use critical water for steam generation. It doesn’t. ST108’s critical water requirements apply specifically to the final rinse stage in washers after high-level disinfection, along with decontamination workflows in SPDs.

Steam generators can be fed with water that meets ST108 steam condensate criteria, which is a less stringent requirement than critical water (and a much more cost-effective path to compliance for facilities.

SterilSource was built with this in mind, which is why we offer multiple configurations, each one suited to a different application:

• For steam generator feedwater alone, the base RO and RO/DI configurations are all you need. These two systems produce water that is adequate for a carbon steel or stainless steel generator, with the RO/DI model adding deionization to support stainless steel generators that require resistivity ≥ 1 MΩ·cm.
• For facilities that need ST108 critical water, the RO/DI + ST108 configuration adds bacteria and endotoxin filtration, plus continuous recirculation through the storage tank to prevent water stagnation and biofilm from forming.

Choose the Right SterilSource Configuration

Here’s how to determine which SterilSource system is the right fit for your facility:

• Choose the standard SterilSource RO system if your steam sterilizer uses a carbon steam generator. The RO system’s carbon and anti-scalant pre-filters protect its dual high-capacity RO membranes, which remove up to 99% of dissolved minerals and contaminants. The RO system includes a 15-gallon cone-bottom sanitary tank, onboard conductivity monitoring, and feedwater pump with motorized inlet ball valve.
• Choose the SterilSource RO/DI system if your steam sterilizer uses a stainless steel generator, which requires deionized water with resistivity ≥ 1 MΩ·cm. The RO/DI system features the same carbon, anti-scalant, and dual RO membrane stages as the base configuration, plus a deionizer cartridge polishing step that produces Type II water. This configuration supports compliance with ST108 steam specifications. CSS requires a stainless steel generator for ST-108 steam compliance.
• Choose the SterilSource RO/DI + ST108 system if your facility uses a stainless steel generator that requires ST108 critical feedwater or needs ST108 critical water at point of use (including washers, rinse stations, and decontamination workflows). The RO/DI + ST108 system includes all the same features as the RO/DI system, and adds a CMF bacteria/endotoxin filter and a continuous recirculation loop that cycles water through the storage tank and microbiological filter on an ongoing basis.

All three wall-mounted configurations are designed with space-saving in mind. The RO and RO/DI systems max out at 59.5″ H × 52.375″ W × 12.75″ D, while the RO/DI + ST108 system adds 4” of width to accommodate the recirculation hardware. Daily production is 1,440 gallons across the lineup. Filtration replacement is highly dependent on your location and incoming feedwater quality, but the standard runs every six months for carbon/KDF, and every two to three years for the RO members, with DI cartridges and the CMF filter replaced as needed.

A Note for Life Science Laboratories

While SterilSource was designed for healthcare environments, life science laboratories that run steam sterilizers can still benefit from this system. Its compact, wall-mounted footprint sits comfortably inside crowded lab spaces and equipment rooms where most conventional RO systems can’t, and its parallel filtration delivers enough water output to support continuous autoclave use without a large pre-fill storage tank. Onboard conductivity monitoring is a useful addition for labs that maintain internal quality standards, even without the regulatory weight of ST108 behind it.

SterilSource offers a viable path for research facilities that have historically gone without RO to feed their steam generators with properly conditioned water.

Bringing Premium Water Purification Within Reach

For too long, water purification systems have been built to meet the sterile processing needs of large-scale healthcare facilities, with footprints and price tags to match. SterilSource changes that, offering ASCs, clinics, and other facilities facing spatial constraints with a system that meets their throughput and compliance requirements at a fraction of the size and cost of comparable RO systems.

Want to learn more about how much space (and money) you can save with SterilSource? Contact our team today for more information.