Microbial cultivation in rocking single-use bioreactors

The application of single-use bioreactors (SUB) for microbial cultivation, especially of reactor designs beyond the traditional stirred tank, is usually regarded as crucial. Especially the usually low gas mass transfer coefficients are insufficient, however this is not true for 2-dimensionally rocking motion bioreactors like the CELL-tainer®. Volumetric gas mass transfer coefficients (kLa-values) of 600 h-1 are achieved (fig. 1), which allow bacterial fed-batch cultivations up to a cell density of 50 gL-1 at growth rates of 0.3 h-1 w/o any oxygen blending (Junne et al, Chem Eng Technol 2013, 85, p. 57-66). One major asset in this respect are the low maximum shear forces in comparison to stirred tank reactors. This feature might be beneficial when shear sensitive microbes are cultivated, like marine phototrophic and heterotrophic microalgae and filamentous organisms. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract