Residence Time Distribution (RTD) Analysis of a Bioreactor's External Recirculation Loop for a Tissue Engineering Test Bed
Abstract
Currently, in tissue engineering, the focus is on morphing cells into a
particular type of tissue by hand, rather than automating the process. Automating cell
feeding and waste removal, alone,still requires the removal of cells from their culture
to perform imaging and analysis. Without the ability to automate the imaging in a
way that does not risk cell death, the advantages of automating the feeding and waste
removal are largely lost. By building a fully automated tissue engineering test bed,
the capacity for cell reproducibility and cell yield increases significantly. This thesis
outlines the design, some initial testing, and some validation of a fully automated
tissue engineering test bed. The goals of this thesis are twofold. Firstly, the goal is to
design the plumbing, instrumentation, and control aspects of a fully autonomous test
bed. Secondly, the goal is to validate the plumbing by confirming that the net
adsorption on the plumbing walls is negligible via residence time distribution
analysis with dye and glucose tracers.