Design and Manufacture of a Disposable Shaken Bioreactor in Pilot Scale

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 School of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, I.R. IRAN

2 Institute of Millibioreactor and Screening Engineering, Research Center for New Technologies in Life Science Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, I.R. IRAN

Abstract

In this paper, design and manufacturing of a pilot scale shaken disposable bioreactor was studied. The very simple, versatile and widely used shaken technology was combined with the cylindrical disposable reactors to make it an ideal choice for cultivation of plant, animal and insect cell cultures for pilot-scale production. To study scale up parameters, cylindrical millibioreactors of 500 mL volume as lab-scale models and disposable bioreactors up to 50 L volume as the main bioreactors were thoroughly characterized in terms of important engineering parameters such as mixing, power consumption, and oxygen transfer rate. To evaluate these bioreactors, some case studies were conducted. Tests were done using the Sulfite System which is a promising method based on oxidation of SO3 ­to SO4­. Effect of RPM, filling volume, aeration and power consumption were studied on bioreactor operation and scale up parameters discussed based on the presented results. The best performance obtained at 250 RPM with 20% filling volume. Power consumption was highly dependent on mixing and increasing the RPM from 200 to 250 and subsequent 13% reduction in mixing time led to 50% increase in power consumption. Hence,the choice of optimum economic condition will be project dependent. As the final verification, OTRmax values were calculated. The maximum and minimum values were 0.028 and 0.008 mol/L/hr (at 250 and 100 RPM) respectively. The minimum OTRmax obtained in this large shaking bioreactor is twice as the maximum oxygen demand of plant, animal and insect cells reported in references and hence these cells can be easily cultivated at relatively “mild” operating conditions.

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References

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