Hydrodynamics in a disposable rectangular parallelepiped stirred bioreactor with elliptic pendulum motion paddle

•Stereo-PIV measurements in the 50 dm3 disposable Nucleo™ bioreactor.•Original reactor design: parallelepiped tank with elliptic pendulum motion paddle.•Mean flow pattern looks like helix coiled on itself to form a distorted horizontal torus.•No stagnant area but mean velocity is twice higher in the cone swept by the paddle.•Relevant data to validate animal cell culture process in this disposable bioreactor.

Stainless steel bioreactors increasingly fall behind to their disposable counterparts in pharma research as they do not require cleaning or sterilization. This led company ATMI LifeSciences to develop the “Nucleo™”. Original in design, this disposable bioreactor comprises a rectangular parallelepiped plastic bag stirred by a paddle revolving in elliptic pendulum motion. Studies covering this bioreactor showed good homogeneity of culture medium as well as good productivity for animal cell cultures. To further explain these good performances, the flow inside the “Nucleo™” had to be resolved. This paper focuses on the mean flow description, computed from stereo-PIV measurements performed in 20 verticals covering the whole volume of a 50 dm3 Nucleo™ bioreactor. As the flow is already turbulent in the chosen agitation conditions, its dimensionless mean velocity field does not vary with the paddle rotational speed. Mean flow pattern exhibits an axial symmetry – same flow is observed in opposite quarters of the tank – and can be described as a three-dimensional helix coiled on itself to form a distorted horizontal torus which covers the whole tank volume. Mean velocity value is on average doubled in the cone swept by the paddle, and its two horizontal components are twice higher than its vertical ones. However, mean velocity remains significant everywhere and, in particular, no stagnant area is observed in tank corners. Our results thus confirm previous studies observations.

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