11th World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography
Analysis of Gas hold-up in a Dual Coaxial Mixing Bioreactor Containing Biopolymer Solution via Electrical Resistance Tomography
Forough Sharifi 1,*, Ehsan Behzadfar 2 and Farhad Ein-Mozaffari 1
1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Toronto Metropolitan University, 350 Victoria Street,
Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada; fmozaffa@torontomu.ca
2 Sustainable Polymers Research Lab, The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University,
350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada; behzadfar@torontomu.ca
* Email: forough.sharifi@torontomu.ca
ABSTRACT
Gas-liquid mixing within stirred bioreactors has significant implications across various industrial applications. Recently, coaxial mixing bioreactors have gained attention for their effectiveness in achieving superior gas dispersion. Assessing gas hold-up is crucial for evaluating the performance and scaling up of aerated mixing tanks. However, most of the existing techniques for investigating gas hold-up in stirred bioreactors handling highly viscous non-Newtonian fluids have limitations. To address this, Electrical resistance tomography (ERT) was employed in this study to measure the local and overall gas hold-up. ERT offers advantages such as robustness, rapid data acquisition, low material costs, ease of installation, and non-intrusiveness, while eliminating radiation hazards. This study focused on analyzing gas hold-up in aerated double coaxial mixing bioreactors containing pseudoplastic fluids with yield stress. The results revealed that the downward pumping and co-rotating mode exhibited the highest aeration efficiency (i.e., gas hold-up per specific power consumption). Increasing the anchor speed up to 30 rpm enhanced the gas hold-up, but further increases led to a decline in the gas hold-up values. These findings highlighted the optimal performance of the coaxial mixing system at an anchor speed of 30 rpm.
Keywords: Coaxial mixing bioreactor; Highly viscous non-Newtonian fluids; Electrical resistance tomography; Gas hold-up
Industrial Application: Biofermentation process; Pharmaceutical manufacturing; Wastewater treatment plants
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