Bubble free gaseous transfer in bioreactors using perfluorocarbons

✍ Scribed by S. Martin; P. Soucaille; J. -S. Condoret

• Book ID: 104744305
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 794 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1615-7605
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00369560

✦ Synopsis

In this work the concept of bubble-free oxygenation that was able to ensure oxygen supply and carbon dioxide extraction for a chemostat culture of Escherichia coli was experimentally demonstrated. It was operated at the dilution rate of 0.275 h-1 under atmospheric pressure and at 35.5 ~ Foralkyl, a commercial perfluorocarbon, added in the influent medium under emulsified form and at 50% volumic fraction, was able to provide 0.17 g Odl/h and extract 0.23 g COfll/h for a culture at 0.74 g/1 of biomass. This oxygen supply was close to the maximum oxygenation Foralkyl was theoretically able to provide at this pressure when imposing a minimum oxygen concentration of 1 rag/1 in the water phase. The quantification of transfer was not done from a direct measurement of oxygen transfer rates because conventional oxygen concentration measurement by membrane polarographic probe in an emulsion was not judged reliable. This evaluation was done by referring to conventional aerated culture whose measurable parameters (biomass and product concentrations) were found unaffected when shifting to the novel oxygenation device.