Industrial bioreactors
featuring inadequate geometry and operating
conditions may depress the effectiveness and the efficiency of the
hosted bioprocess. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used
to find a suitable operating match between the target bioprocess and
the available bioreactor. The aim of this work is to investigate the
feasibility of addressing bioreactor improvement problems in the bioprocess
industry with the aid of such mainstream tools as industry-standard
CFD. This study illustrates how to effectively simulate both the impeller
rotation and air supply and discusses the way toward model validation
at the 4.1 m
3
capacity scale. Referring to experimentally
measured process values, the developed full-scale model successfully
predicted the power draw, liquid phase level, and mixing time with
errors lower than 4.6, 1.1, and 6.7%, respectively, thus suggesting
the illustrated approach as a best practice design method for the
bioprocess industry. The validated model was employed to improve performance
by reducing the power draw in aerated conditions with a minimal operational
derating.