Mixing Performance Analysis of Orbitally Shaken Bioreactors

Abstract

This study investigated the efficacy of a novel correlation of power input, energy dissipation rate and mixing time as a potential route to identify the orbitally shaken bioreactor (OSB) system. The Buckingham’s π-theorem was used to designate and transform dimensionless Newton numbers with five relevant power input variables. These variables were empirically varied to evaluate the correlation among the dimensionless numbers. The Newton number decreases with the increased shaking frequency and filling volume. Previous work has focused on optimizing the mixing process by evaluating different shaking and agitation mixing methods. We establish a new mixing process and assessable measurement of the mixing time in the OSB. An innovative explanation of mixing time for the thermal method is proposed. The optimal mixing time is independent of the temperature of filled liquid. The dimensionless mixing number remained constant in the turbulent regime and increasing with the increased liquid viscosity and filling volume. Our findings revealed that the observed correlation is a practical tool to figure the power consumption and mixing efficiency as cell cultivation in all OSB scales and is fully validated when scaling–up system.

Keywords

• orbital shaken
• bioreactor
• mixing time
• power consumption