Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS International Conference on BIOMEDICAL ELECTRONICS and BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS

Bioreactors of Basket Type with Immobilized Biocatalysts

ROXANA BALTARU2, ANCA-IRINA GALACTION1, and DAN CACAVAL2
1 Faculty of Medical Bioengineering
Gr.T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iai
M.Kogalniceanu 9-13, 700454 Iai
ROMANIA
anca.galaction@bioinginerie.ro
2 Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection
Gh. Asachi Technical University of Iai
D.Mangeron 71, 700050 Iai
ROMANIA
dancasca@ch.tuiasi.ro

Abstract: The spectacular applications of the immobilized biocatalysts determined the design and construction of
some proper bioreactors, specific or derived from the classical ones. Among them, the bioreactors with
immobilized biocatalysts are some of the most studied and applied bioreactors. The biocatalyst could be disposed
around the stirrer in a fixed bed with cylindrical geometry. This type of bioreactor is known as basket bioreactor. In
this context, the aim of the paper is to briefly review the recent literature on the main types of the basket bioreactors
with immobilized biocatalysts, from the viewpoint of their construction and applications, by analyzing their
advantages/disadvantages comparatively to the other types of bioreactors.

Key-words: Bioreactor, Immobilized Cells, Fixed Bed, Basket Bioreactors

1 INTRODUCTION expanded or fluidized bed. Among them, the bioreactors

The bioreactor is assimilated with the heart of the
biotechnological process, being the equipment in which
the substrates are converted to the desired products
under the microorganisms, cells or enzymes action. This
comparison is due to the fact that the bioreactor
aspirates the nutritive media and the biocatalysts
through the upstream routes, pumping off the
biosynthetic products through the downstream routes [1].
Numerous types of bioreactors are currently used at
laboratory or industrial scale. Although the bioreactors
with immobilized biocatalysts are derived from the
classical bioreactors and, therefore, their constructive
and functionally characteristics are rather similar with
the second ones, the place of bioreactors with
immobilized biocatalysts is privileged. The top position
is the result of the advantages offered by the use of the
immobilized microorganisms, cells or enzymes, namely
as: the increase of the thermal, chemical and to the shear
forces resistance of the biocatalysts, the increase of the
number of the repeated biosynthesis cycles using the
same particles of biocatalysts, the easier recovery of the
biocatalysts from the final broths, the diminution or
avoidance of the inhibition processes.
The bioreactors using immobilized biocatalyst can
be designed as column, stirred, airlift or membrane
bioreactors.
They are operated in batch, continuous or
semicontinuous systems, with fixed, mobile/stirred,
with stirred/mobile bed of immobilized biocatalysts are
some of the most studied and applied bioreactors, owing
to their very similar constructive and operational
characteristics to those of the well-known stirred
bioreactors. The main difference between the
constructions of the two types of bioreactors consists on
the presence at the bottom of the former ones of a sieve
which avoids the biocatalysts particles washout.
2 BIOREACTORS WITH FIXED BED
OF BIOCATALYSTS
In the last decade, the bioreactors with fixed bed of
biocatalysts (packed-bed bioreactors) became some of
the most used type of bioreactors, because of their low
costs of exploitation and maintenance, easiness of
scaling-up and of automatic controlling, generation of
significant lower shear forces, and, consequently,
avoidance of the breakage of biocatalysts particles. The
packed-bed bioreactors are used for wastewater
treatment, biosorption from wastewater of different
metallic ions, solvents and fuels, pharmaceuticals and
fine chemicals production.
Sarti et al. (2001) designed a packed-bed tubular
bioreactor for wastewater treatment with the biocatalyst
bed consisting on the anaerobic activated sludge
entrapped into polyurethane foam. The bioreactor is
placed horizontally, the ratio between its length and

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 Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS International Conference on BIOMEDICAL ELECTRONICS and BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS

diameter being of 20. The formed gas is collected

through a perforated tube placed on the bioreactor
length. The efficiency of this bioreactor is comparable
with the classical basin with activated sludge, but its
working volume is significant lower and the process
parameters can be more precisely controlled and
regulated.
The ethanol has been obtained from molasses by
yeasts cells entrapped into alginate matrix, and could be
used in food/beverage industry or as biofuel. In this
purpose, a bioreactor of column type having the
immobilized yeasts on a sieve plate has been used. The
fermentation can be carried out at higher sugar
concentration and at lower pH-value than the process
using free yeasts cells. The optimum alginate particles
diameter was found to be between 2 and 2.4 mm.
The biocatalyst could be disposed around the stirrer Fig. 1 Porous vessel with immoblized biocatalyst
in a fixed bed with cylindrical geometry. This type of
bioreactor is known as basket bioreactor and is derived In another application of the invention, the
from the catalytic basket reactor, described for the first immobilized biocatalyst is placed in one or more than
time by Carberry in 1964. In the case of ethanol one porous vessel in series, in a common circulating tank
production, the stirred basket bioreactor offers many or several porous vessel in separate circulating tanks
advantages compared with the conventional stirred connected in parallel or in series (Fig.2).
bioreactor: it can be operated in batch, fed-batch or
continuous flow systems, the productivity is for 4 - 6
times higher (12 g/l.h), more accurate control of the
temperature and pH, the stability of biocatalysts allows
to repeating the fermentation cycles for over 35 times.
The application of this bioreactor could be extended to
the treatment of wastewater, especially for recovering
the heavy metals from mine drainage [2].

3 TYPES OF BASKET
BIOREACTORS
Basket bioreactor described by Fadnavis et. al. (2007)
provides a porous vessel bioreactor apparatus for use in
reaction with immobilized enzymes and/or microbial
cells. The above-mentioned apparatus consist of a
vertically elongated reaction vessel having at least one
liquid reactant inlet, at least one product outlet on the
vessel, at least one porous vessel completely submerged
in the reactant. The porous vessel have pore size ranging
from 5 mm to 0.2 microns and a vertical length less than
a level of the reactants to be maintained in the vessel,
immobilized biocatalysts particles comprising the
enzymes and/or microbial cells placed inside the porous
vessel such that the liquid reactant is in contact with the
biocatalyst in both radial and axial direction. The feed
point to the porous vessel can be located at any point
along the dimensions of the porous vessel, preferably at
either at a top or at a bottom end of the vessel. The
invention has the advantage of permitting greater contact
between reactants and biocatalyst, which in turn
increases the reaction rate and efficiency of the
biocatalytic reaction. Another advantage is that the
biocatalyst is separated from the reaction mixture simply
by draining the circulating liquid [3].
Fig. 2 Porous vessel bioreactors in parallel
One of the most severe technological problems in
large scale animal cell cultures is oxygen transfer to the
cellsparticularly at high cell densities [1]. For
Anchorage-Dependent Cells (ADC) such as MRC-5
cells (human diploid fibroblasts) used for the production
of polio, rabies and other human viral vaccines, a
different type of basket-type bioreactor has evolved to
production scale that largely overcomes the shear
problems associated with direct air-sparging of large
scale bioreactors. This design is a natural extension of
earlier advancements in bioreactor design. The rotating
wire-cage bioreactor of the late 80s has been
successfully employed in microcarrier, aggregate and
even single-cell suspension cultures. A drawback of
conventional microcarrier culture technology is the large
ratio of settled bead volume to culture volume.
The relatively large volume of settled beads
increases the degree of sophistication required for the
agitation system to suspend the beads without damaging
the cells. By changing the geometry of the vessel, the

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 Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS International Conference on BIOMEDICAL ELECTRONICS and BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS
Electrolux bioreactor unit used in this study addresses
these problems.
A schematic diagram of one such industrial size
three phase bioreactor (1200 l Electrolux) is shown in
Fig.3. As seen, the essential feature of this bioreactor is a
conical shape, symmetric basket region located at the
center of the fermentor and occupying less than 7% of
the total volume.
Air or air/oxygen mixtures are sparged directly into
the bottom of the conical basket region. Oxygenated
medium flows outwards through the screen to the
immobilized cell region which is devoid of bubbles and
is gently stirred by a marine type impeller located at the
bottom of the conical basket (Fig. 4). The whole screen
rotates at the same speed as the impeller. Commercially
available Cytodex I microcarrier beads at a loading of 5
g/l are typically used to support the MRC-5 cells.
Microcarrier beads do not pass through the screen
because the mesh hole size is 80 m [4].
Fig. 3 Schematic diagram of the 1200 l Electrolux
bioreactor used in microcarrier cultures of animal cells
for the production of vaccines
Fig. 4 Schematic diagram of medium flow patterns from
the aerated region that contains the air sparger through
the rotating screen to the bubble-free region and vice
versa
ISSN: 1790-5125
Measurements of gasliquid and liquidsolid mass
transfer coefficients performed in two types of three-
phase laboratory reactor equipped with stationary
catalytic basket and multiple impeller were describe by
Pitault et al. (2005). Those reactors are called Robinson
Mahoney (RM) reactors [5].
The RM reactors are specifically designed to offer an
optimal contact between gas and liquid, and liquid and
solid. They consist of a multiple impeller located inside
a stationary catalytic basket, which provides the fluid
flow through the basket wherein the catalytic pellets are
maintained. Even if both reactors use the same concept
of stationary catalytic basket, the design differences were
important:
In the Autoclave Engineers reactor, the whole volume
is filled with liquid while gas is the dispersed phase. A
distributor at the bottom of the tank introduces both
phases into the center of the annular basket. A standard
six-bladed radial turbine impels the gas bubbles and
liquid phase through the basket to the reactor wall. Gas
and liquid outlets are at the tank top (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5 Basket and impeller of the cold-flow reactor
model of RM reactor provided by Autoclave Engineers
(AERM)
In the Parr reactor, the liquid phase fills the two-thirds
of the tank volume while the remaining third consists in
a gas space. The gas-inducing impeller allows to produce
gas bubbles in liquid phase and to flow gas and liquid
phases through the basket to the reactor wall. In this
reactor, the induced gas flow depends on the local
pressure at the exit orifice of the impeller, and on
operating parameters such as liquid level or rotation
speed (Fig. 6).
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Fig. 7 Sketch of the AE reactor: (1) six-blade radial-type

turbine; (2) four pitched blade turbine; (3) catalytic
basket; (4) internal baffle; (5) external baffle; (6) ring
Fig. 6 Basket and impeller of the cold-flow reactor
closing the basket at the top and at the bottom
model of RM reactor provided by Parr Instruments
Company (PRM)
The Parr reactor investigated by Fongarland (2003)
has a volume of 300 ml (Fig. 8) [8]. It has a diameter of
In both configurations, the catalytic pellets are only
6.4 cm and a height of 10 cm. The interface gas/liquid is
in contact with the liquid phase. Moreover, performed in
located at 8.2 cm from the reactor base. The fluid is
continuous mode, those reactors allow to test catalysts in
stirred by a gas inducing turbine which is composed of
larger ranges of weight hourly space velocity (WHSV)
three 17o pitched blades (Fig. 8a). The blade dimensions
and gas to liquid flow ratio than packed bed reactors and
are 2.4 cm in diameter, 4.3 cm high and 0.2 cm thick.
allow direct rate measurements very convenient for
The gas is transferred to the liquid phase through the
kinetics estimation too.
shaft by means of two holes located above the gas/fluid
The same types of bioreactors were used by
interface and at the horizontal plane of symmetry of the
Magnico et al. (2006) to investigate more accurately the
blades. The basket has an inner diameter of 3.4 cm, an
hydrodynamics of the those two bioreactors by means of
outer diameter of 5 cm and a height of 5.1 cm. As in the
CFD in order to compare the effect of the blade/baffle
AE reactor, two horizontal rings (0.3 cm width) close the
hydrodynamic interaction on the flow pattern [6].
basket. The reactor has two kinds of baffles. Three inner
The AE reactor, which has a volume of 0.9 l, was
baffles of cylindrical form are located inside the basket
investigated by Mitrovic (2001) (Fig. 7). It has an inner
and three outer ones are located along the tank wall (5.1
diameter of 8 cm and a height of 18 cm. The fluid is
cm height, 4 mm width and 3 mm large). The bottom of
stirred by a six-blade radial-type turbine and a pair of
the blades and of the basket are located at 3.9 and 1.3
four 45o pitched blade axial-type turbines (Fig. 7a). The
cm, respectively, from the bottom of the reactor.
diameter of the blades is 3.2 cm. The radial turbine is 5.5
cm high and 0.2 cm thick; the axial turbine is 1 cm high
and 0.2 cm thick (Fig. 7b and c). The catalytic basket has
an inner diameter and an outer one of 4.25 and 5.75 cm,
respectively. The basket height is 9 cm. Two horizontal
rings (0.9 cm width) close the top and the bottom of the
basket. Two types of baffles fit out the reactor. Four
outer baffles (9cm0.4cm) are located along the catalytic
basket at the outer interface. Four inner baffles (9 cm
1.6 cm) are inside the basket and in the stirred region.
The basket and the turbines are located at 11.4 cm Fig. 8 Sketch of the Parr reactor: (1) three pitched blade
respectively from the top of the reactor. The gas is gas-inducing-type turbine; (1b) gas suction hole; (1c) gas
injected from the bottom of the reactor, but at the top ejection hole; (2) catalytic basket; (3) ring closing the
there is no gas/liquid interface [7]. basket at the top and at the bottom; (4) external baffle;
(5) internal baffle; (6) liquid/gas interface

The simulations reveal in both reactors a ring-

shaped vortex around the impeller in the agitation
region. The high axial location of its centre induces a
reverse flow at the tips of the basket. Owing to the fluid
friction in the porous medium, the azimuthal flow in the
core region is transformed into a radial flow in the
basket where the flow decreases abruptly. Vertical
vortices are located at the blade tips and at the

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 Proceedings of the 2nd WSEAS International Conference on BIOMEDICAL ELECTRONICS and BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS
downstream face of the baffles or they are located in the
basket on both sides of the baffles, depending on the
design and the location of the baffles. At the inner radius
interface of the basket, the vertical blade impeller
induces a rather homogeneous velocity profile, but the
pitched blade impeller imposes a high velocity at the
plane of symmetry. Therefore the simulations
demonstrate that two different local velocity patterns and
two different porous media may induce the same mass
transfer properties.
Streptomycin production from chitin by
Streptomyces griseus was compared by Richard J.L. et.
al. (2008) using two different types of bioreactor [9].
One of them was a bioreactor of novel design in which
the chitin was contained in a wire mesh basket that was
totally submerged in a liquid salts medium (Fig. 9).
During operation the chitin was gently fluidised by air
admitted into the basket. Fermentation was continued in
both bioreactors until maximum antibiotic titres were
achieved whereupon operation was interrupted to allow
the streptomycin adsorbed to the chitin substrate to be
extracted into pH 3.0 buffer before continuing
fermentation of the same batch of chitin a second time.
At a chitin concentration of 10% (w/v) the highest
streptomycin yields (cca. 5.5 mg/l) were obtained using
the stirred bioreactor, however, growth occurred faster in
the vertical basket bioreactor.
Fig. 9 Vertical basket bioreactor
Sheelu et.al (2008) report immobilization of Lecitase in
a gelatin hydrogel matrix crosslinked with
glutaraldehyde [10]. The immobilization matrix is quite
cheap and biocompatible, the immobilized enzyme is
found to be thermally stable and can be used several
times for degumming of rice bran oil. A spinning basket
reactor is found to be highly effective in overcoming the
problems of attrition of the gel and separation of the
immobilized enzyme from the oil (Fig.10).
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Fig. 10 A schematic representation of spinning basket
bioreactor for degumming of rice bran oil
The porous catalytic basket is made of stainless
steel. The solid catalyst particles (diameter 12 mm) are
packed loosely in the basket which is rotated in the
jacketed vessel containing crude rice bran oil. Samples
are collected at 30-min intervals, treated with bleaching
earth and activated charcoal, dewaxed and analyzed for
their phosphorus content. In a single operation under
optimum conditions, the phosphorus content of the rice
bran oil decreases from 400 ppm to 5070 ppm in 2 h.
Increasing the speed of the impeller from 50 to 400 rpm
shows that the reaction rate increases with impeller
speed and between 350 and 400 rpm reaches a constant
value.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In the last decade, the bioreactors with fixed bed of
biocatalysts (packed-bed bioreactors) became some of
the most used type of bioreactors and among them the
basket ones seems to be one of the most promising
bioreactors in a large field of the chemical engineering:
wastewater treatment, biosorption from wastewater of
different metallic ions, solvents and fuels,
pharmaceuticals and chemicals production.
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ISSN: 1790-5125 243 ISBN: 978-960-474-110-6