Airlift bioreactor for biological applications with microbubble mediated transport processes

Airlift bioreactors can provide an attractive alternative to stirred tanks, particularly for bioprocesses with gaseous reactants or products. Frequently, however, they are susceptible to being limited by gas–liquid mass transfer and by poor mixing of the liquid phase, particularly when they are operating at high cell densities. In this work we use CFD modelling to show that microbubbles generated by fluidic oscillation can provide an effective, low energy means of achieving high interfacial area for mass transfer and improved liquid circulation for mixing.

The results show that when the diameter of the microbubbles exceeded 200 µm, the “downcomer” region, which is equivalent to about 60% of overall volume of the reactor, is free from gas bubbles. The results also demonstrate that the use of microbubbles not only increases surface area to volume ratio, but also increases mixing efficiency through increasing the liquid velocity circulation around the draft tube. In addition, the depth of downward penetration of the microbubbles into the downcomer increases with decreasing bubbles size due to a greater downward drag force compared to the buoyancy force. The simulated results indicate that the volume of dead zone increases as the height of diffuser location is increased. We therefore hypothesise that poor gas bubble distribution due to the improper location of the diffuser may have a markedly deleterious effect on the performance of the bioreactor used in this work.