Modeling reaction and mass transfer in bioreactor scale-up

Due to increased demand worldwide, the number and scale of industrial bioprocesses continues to expand at a rapid rate. Understanding scale-up mechanisms for reducing performance losses is critical for successful industrial applications. In this work, Corteva Agriscience works with Simcenter M-Star to present a large-eddy-simulation–based approach to simulating a bioreactor system. It is shown that the presence of reactions can result in a non-uniform spatially varying species concentration field, the magnitude and extent of which is directly related to the reaction rates and the underlying variations in the local volumetric mass transfer coefficient.