Airlift bioreactors are quite similar to the stirred tank reactors, except for the impeller.

This is a gas liquid bioreactor which is based on the draught tube principle. In this
reactor compressed air is used for aeration and agitation. Usually the hairy roots
require 0.05–0.4 vol of air/vol of liquid/min oxygen supply for optimum growth. In this
reactor the aerator is a glass grid which helps to pass the humidified air, which is
useful for mixing and oxygenation. Airlift reactors are in use for culturing different
hairy roots, but they have their own drawbacks as well. A major drawback of this
reactor is the formation of a dead zone due to insufficient mixing and nonuniform
nutrient supply caused by high biomass density. These limitations badly affect the
growth of hairy roots and secondary metabolite production.

Airlift Bioreactor Vessels

● Volume: 200L - 700L, with 70-85% working volume
● Material: Tank SUS316L, jacket SUS304 (polishing better than Ra 0.4 um)
● Ratio: Diameter to height, 1: 5
● Design Pressure: Tank 0.3Mpa, Jacket 0.4Mpa
● Ports: 5 x sensor port, 2 x gas supply port (ring sparger), 1 x Inoculating
port, 1 x Sampling port, 5 x Filling port, other spare ports
● Sterilization: SIP online steam sterilization
● Sparge: SS316L ring sparger in the bottom
● Seal: Mechanical drive or mechanical seal
● Options: Storage bottles, vessel passivation, custom port, cover lifting, etc.

Applications of Airlift Bioreactor

 ● Ideal for culturing cells that are too sensitive to the shear stress and heat

generation caused by the mechanical agitation.

● Pallet form fermentation; immobilized enzyme reactions.

● SCP production from methanol as carbon substrate.

● Typically, airlift bioreactors are used when the desired reactants and/or final

products are in a gaseous state and for aerobic cell cultures.

Bioreactor Engineering
Si-Jing Wang, Jian-Jiang Zhong, in Bioprocessing for Value-Added Products from
Renewable Resources, 2007

2.2 Pneumatically agitated bioreactors

There are two main types of pneumatically agitated bioreactors: air-lift and
bubble-column bioreactors. As shown in Fig. 4, the main difference between them is
that the air-lift bioreactors contain a draft tube (internal loop) or an external loop.
The draft tube or the external loop gives the air-lift bioreactor a number of
advantages: preventing bubble coalescence by directing them in one direction;
distributing shear stresses more evenly throughout the reactor, thus providing a
more favorable environment for cell growth; enhancing the cyclical movement of
fluid, thus increasing mass and heat transfer rates.
In a typical air-lift bioreactor with an internal loop (as shown in Fig. 4a), air is fed
through a sparger ring into the bottom of a central draft tube, which directs the
circulation of both air bubbles and liquid. Air bubbles flow up inside the central draft
tube; some of them coalesce and exit at the top of the column while other bubbles
follow the degassed liquid and circulate down from the area outside the draft tube.
Some air-lift bioreactors use an external-loop. The air-lift reactor with an external
riser sparges bubbles into the section which is outside the draft tube. Turbulence is
generally greater in the riser rather than the downcomer section of an airlift reactor.
Since the heating/cooling jacket is located on the walls of the air-lift reactor, a
reactor with an external riser will have the advantage of having greater turbulence
near the jacket and thus better heat transfer efficiency. It is also believed that
reactors with external risers foam less than those with internal risers.
Air-lift bioreactors with various configurations have been constructed for use in a
variety of fermentation processes, cell cultures, and biological wastewater treatment.
The air-lift bioreactor is the second type that is well documented and characterized,
but is less so than the stirred tank bioreactor. Much experimental and modeling work
has been done to illustrate the transport phenomena, such as liquid circulation,
mixing, and oxygen transfer. A variety of designs for the air-lift bioreactors have also
been proposed and tested. Several column designs with vertical circulation have been
tested by Viestures et al. [27, 28]. Several researchers have investigated air-lift
bioreactors with multiple draft tubes for their solid circulation, hydrodynamics,
mixing, and oxygen transfer characteristics [29–32]. Recently, Wei et al. [33, 34]
investigated the hydrodynamics and mass transfer of an internal-loop air-lift reactor
with a convergence-divergence draft tube. Other designs include a simple
split-column [35, 36], a propeller-driven loop [37] and varieties in sparging devices
[37, 38].
Air-lift bioreactors have been widely used in filamentous fermentation, biological
wastewater treatment, production of single cell proteins, and plant and animal cell
cultures. Because they provide a low-shear environment and good mass transfer,
air-lift bioreactors are often been preferred in filamentous fermentations [39, 40].
Compared to stirred tank reactors, one of their major advantages is that the cost
associated with agitation and aeration can be substantially reduced [41, 42]. Other
advantages of using air-lift bioreactors include: ease of scale-up, low shear
characteristics, no moving parts, high O2 transfer efficiency, and predictable flow
patterns.
Compared to the air-lift bioreactor, standard bubble columns have some
considerable disadvantages: backmixing in the continuous liquid phase and the
decrease of interfacial area due to bubble coalescence in the viscous liquids. To
overcome these disadvantages, some modifications to the standard design have been
proposed. For example, multistage bubble column reactors sectionalized by
perforated plates have been used. It has been commonly acknowledged that
sectionalizing bubble column reactors can significantly improve their mass transfer
characteristics and, at the same time, substantially reduce the degree of backmixing
in contacted phases [43, 44].
There are many recent research reports [45–47] on the fluid dynamic characteristics
of bubble column reactors, but their application to biological processes, such as
microbial fermentation and cell cultures, is quite limited. Hu et al. [48] scaled up a
Panax notoginseng cell culture process from shake flasks to a 1.0-L bubble column
reactor and concentric-tube air-lift reactor. Both the maximum cell density and
productivity of ginseng saponin in the batch culture were found to be higher than in
shake flasks but lower than in air-lift reactors. Barbosa et al. [49] studied the effect of
hydrodynamic stress on two different microalgae strains, Dunaliella tertiolecta and
D. salina, cultivated in bench-scale bubble columns. In this type of bubble column
reactor, it was found that bubble rising and bubble bursting were not causing cell
death. Instead, bubble formation at the gas sparger was found to be mainly
responsible for cell death.
In general, the reports on the development of new types of pneumatically agitated
bioreactors, including air-lift and bubble column reactors, are few while research on
the application of the existing pneumatically-agitated bioreactors (with some
modifications in configuration or operating conditions) is abundant. This is because
the only way to evaluate a bioreactor is to apply it to a particular biological reaction
system.