The Packed Bed Bioreactor

Supervisor Professor : Dr. Rashedi Producer: Alireza Mehrdadfar

Introduction
Packed bed or fixed bed bioreactors are commonly used with attached biofilms especially in wastewater engineering.

The use of packed bed reactors gained importance after the potential of whole cell immobilization technique has been demonstrated.

The immobilized biocatalyst is packed in the column and fed with nutrients either from top or from bottom.

Introduction

One of the disadvantages of packed beds is the changed flow characteristic due to alterations in the bed porosity during operation. While working with soft gels like alginates, carragenan etc the bed compaction which generally occurs during fermentation results in high pressure drop across the bed.

Schematic of Packed Bed Bioreactor

Uses of Packed Bed Bioreactor

Used for production of aspartate and fumarate, conversion of penicillin to 6aminopenicillanic acid, and resolution of amino acid isomers.

Unsuitable for processes which produce large quantities of gases which can be trapped in the packing

Use for water purification

Packing Materials

The first application in bioprocessing was the production of foot-and-mouth disease virus using BHK cells grown

Modelling of Bioreactor

Modelling of Bioreactor

Result

The demonstration on how the model can give an insight into packed bed performance and the effect of size and operational and design parameters on the performance is developed.

Superficial air velocity, inlet air temperature and geometric ratio are predicted to have significant effects on the temperature and growth in the upper regions of the packed bed.

The End
Thanks for your attention!