Fermenters and other Bioreactors
Generally, is a bioreactor a container with nutrient fluid, in which cells or microorganims are cultured under the best possible conditions. The aim is to yield or augment cells, parts of them or one of their metabolic products. Bioreactors exists in very different sizes starting with a volume of a few millilitres for laboratory experiments up to some thousand litres for industrial applications. The variety of construction forms and functionalities is enormous.
Object of the numerical simulation is to support the optimisation of all culturing conditions. Both, the flow through the system and the supply of nutrient fluid and the temperature regulation or the choice of relevant operation parameters or boundary conditions can be optimised based on the simulation findings.
Methods of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are used for modelling bioreactors. Special routines are developed and applied by ASD to describe reaction kinetics and cell specific dependencies. In addition to flow parameters cell metabolism and growth of cells can be computed.
Results - The simulation results yield information about the 3D distributions of velocity, shear rate (critical for cell damage), temperature and concentration. They allow a better adaptation of the geometry and operation parameters for optimised supply and living conditions of the microorganisms or cells leading to a maximum yield.
- Geometry of a hepatocyte cell reactor
- Streamlines in a hepatocyte cell reactor
- Immobilized hepatocyte cells in a cell chip
