Bioreactor: First look and test run

So, we have kindly been donated a lovely bioreactor. 🙂

As a big fan of these bits of kit I thought I’d try and document my first look as I try to make sense of the many wires and widgets provided.

Here’s the vessel itself. A lovely bit of kit that can be used to contain and monitor a fermentation reaction in a closed system.

It’s a somewhat dated device and the electronic control systems dwarf the unit and are housed in what the documentation refers to as ‘The Mainframe’!:

This system allows you to monitor the levels of dissolved gases, pH, temperature and agitation using various probes. In a modular way, each probe has it’s own control unit which stack up to build your control system.

The reactor system is also comprised of some very nice widgets and nice metal components 🙂

Also, designed as another port insert component. The gauge measures the head pressure generated by the gases released in fermentation processes.

The 180V at 0.5 amp motor which drives the central propeller that provides agitation to the reaction is controlled by an encoder.

After much perusing of the schematics and confusion I managed to set up the agitation unit with the reactor and set it running:

Sorry about the poor photos and vid/sound!

Next steps:

Look at the probe control circuitry more (could this whole thing run off a Pi / Arduino now?)..

I’d like to scale up one of transformed strains, especially miraculin yeast in this.