1. Terry A. Ring Chemical Engineering University of Utah
AIChE Contest Week 3
Terry A. Ring
Chemical Engineering
University of Utah

2. Questions for the Week
The kinetics of CHO paper is pretty useful, to clarify, we use reported values for recombinant CHO cells in our calculations, right?
Yes
Can the seed train have several units for the 4th scale up? The volume needed is x L and tanks don't seem to come in that size/seems like a hazard.
Several units and Sequential Batch Processing is typical of Seed Train and Production reactors.  I can not comment on the volume you quote in this question.
Do we feed glucose into seed train? Several sources and problem statement don't mention what to do, but logically substrate is needed to incite growth. 
I can not comment that is up to your design.

3. Questions
When determining the volume for production reactors, what is a good maximum cell concentration to assume? slides said 1*10^9 cells/ml, but the best we found from other sources say around 1.6*10^7 cells/ml. 
My slides were just some calculations to show you how to do the calculations.  You should not believe the actual numbers for CHO cells in the slides but use information in this problem statement and literature.  Please use the CHO Kinetic paper and other literature as a guide to actual numbers.
We are confused what the titers represent. If we are supposed to obtain 1000 kg of product, what do we do to get them to a concentration of  2g/L? 
Titers represent the concentration of the product at which it is to be sold. To hit such a target you would need to concentrate or dilute to the Titer required. You should note that the chromatography steps will alter the concentration and you can de water or dilute as needed.

4. Questions
Are we expected to increase production to reach increased titers, or is kg/year always true for all titers of products we create?
As I understand the total production rate is 1000 kg Mab/yr but you might sell it at different concentrations - e.g. titers.
May we use disposable (single use) bioreactors in our MAb plant design?
Yes, Single use bioreactors are very common equipment today.  They are used to cut down on cleaning costs and time lost as well as assure sterility. 

5. Questions
 I found an example of an MAb production process using SuperPro Designer. The AIChE prompt led me to it. I was wondering if it was appropriate to use the simulation as a skeleton for our own process where we would tweak what needs to be tweaked to achieve what is asked of us in the prompt. I was not sure if I would run into plagiarism issues in regards to our report.
You can use anything and everything available on the web to aid you in the solution to this problem!

6. Questions
For this year's design project it was recommended that we use SuperPro Designer to model the process but with the free demo version we're very limited in what we can do. We can't save files with more than 2 processes. 
When I registered for the demo, I received the below. Would it benefit the department to purchase an academic license for SuperPro Designer? 
Please talk to your professor and the chair of your department and explain to them that the price of the academic departmental license of SuperPro Designer is only $1250 (one-time fee). The tool can be legally installed on any number of PCs owned by your school so that all groups of students working on this year’s AIChE design project can use it. 
We are looking into purchasing SuperPro Designer for next year.

7. Questions
My group is confused about one of the specifications given in the problem statement. We don't entirely understand what is meant when the statement says that the production reactors need to meet "a process yield of 1 to 2 g/L and 5 to 10 g/L" (pg. 9, section Production Reactors). Does this mean that the MAb concentration in the production reactor as it heads to separations or is this defining the final product concentration after purification and polishing? 
Good question. It is the final product concentration.

8. Questions
 I was wondering if you have access to a Supplemental Information (SI) file for the CHO Cell Kinetics paper. I can't seem to find it and my group was hoping to look at the raw data for one of the figures. 
No, sorry.
Do the CHO cells produce Mab in the seed train?
Yes, you can assume that Mab is produced at all times the cells are alive.
Antibody equation for fed batch. Is it the same for other reactor configurations?
No, Use reactor equation and CHO kinetics for other reactor configurations.

9. CHO cell kinetics – the literature is rich.

10. Questions How do I determine g force for centrifuges.
g[m/s2]=>Rω2, ω =2π*RPM

11. Maria Perez GE Healthcare Has Products for Mab Production
Maria has requested information and prices
Files sent to Maria are in Canvas Files
Note they are confusing using GE HC nomenclature.
Note the files ending in PR are prices for equipment.

12. Other Questions?