A conceptual air-lift reactor design for large scale animal cell cultivation in the context of in vitro meat production.

• A rational reactor scaling-up approach for cultured meat production is proposed. • CFD modeling provides an a priori estimation of reactor performance. • Reactor internals are necessary to improve flow homogeneity at scale. • A single reactor can potentially produce enough meat for 75,000 people. Cell-based meat, or cultured meat is at the early commercialization stage, but thorough considerations of the scaling-up challenges are scarce and the physiological data of animal muscle cells required by reliable process design are severely lacking. To make cultured meat an economically viable source of animal proteins, we propose a rational approach towards the design of a large scale air-lift reactor for cultured meat manufacturing. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling is used as a primary tool to provide an a priori estimation of the mass transfer and mixing performance of the reactor and the effects of reactor internals are investigated. The mass transfer coefficient of 36 1/h, energy dissipation rate of 46 W/m3 and a mixing time of 103 s are all within acceptable ranges typical to animal cells. It is estimated that a single reactor of 300 m3 can supply the meat demand of a population of 75,000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]