Fermentor animal cell cultures

Commercial manufacturing operations in biotechnology usually employ bioreactors or fermentors for product expression. In this discussion, the term fermentor will refer to bacterial or fungal processes and the term bioreactor to animal cell cultures. While extensive description of the operation... 

For an animal cell culture, satisfactory results were obtained with a pilot fermentor, 0.3 m in diameter, with a liquid height of 0.3 m (clear liquid), at a rotational impeller speed N of 1.0 s (impeller diameter 0.1 m) and an air rate (30 °C) of 0.02 m min. The density and viscosity of the broth are 1020kg rn and 0.002 Pa s, respectively. The value can be correlated by Equation 7.36b. When k a is used as the scale-up criterion, and the allowable impeller tip speed is 0.5 m s , estimate the maximum diameter of a geometrically similar stirred tank. 

Animal cells are fragile and cannot be readily cultured in stirred fermentors that produce high shear stresses. 

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