Dr.-Ing. Thomas Wucherpfennig

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG
Bioprocess Development Biologicals

Binger Strasse 173

55216 Ingelheim am Rhein

Phone +49 7351 54-144806

Mail Dr. Thomas Wucherpfennig


Thomas pursued the study of Biotechnology at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, and Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He earned his PhD in Bioprocess Engineering from the Technical University of Braunschweig. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim as a postdoctoral fellow in 2014, Thomas acquired valuable experience in the industrial biotech sector at Roche and Clariant. Since 2015, he has held various roles in cell culture process development at Boehringer Ingelheim and currently serves as a Senior Principal Scientist, spearheading late-stage process development. In addition, Thomas is a lecturer at FH Oberösterreich in Wels and TUHH – Hamburg University of Technology, His research focus is on bioprocess scale-up, bioreactor characterization, Process Analytical Technology (PAT), and cell culture process modeling.

Research Interests

  • Scale-up of bioprocesses
  • Bioreactor characterization
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Process Analytical Technology (PAT)
  • Cell culture process modelling

Publications

[185012]
Title: Predictability of kLa in stirred tank reactors under multiple operating conditions using an Euler–Lagrange approach.
Written by: Wutz, J., Lapin, A., Siebler, F., Schäfer, J.E., Wucherpfennig, T., Berger, M. and Takors, R.
in: <em>Eng. Life Sci.</em>. (2016).
Volume: <strong>16</strong>. Number: (7),
on pages: 633-642
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/elsc.201500135
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Abstract: In industrial cell culture engineering, the production process consists of a multiscale seed train from lab scale to large scale. The oxygen demand of the cells has to be satisfied in all scales. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations can provide a tool to predict the mass transfer between the gas phase and the liquid phase. In this work, CFD was applied using an Euler–Lagrange approach for the prediction of the mass transfer coefficient (urn:x-wiley:16180240:media:elsc875:elsc875-math-0001) in stirred tank bioreactors for a wide range of operating conditions. The turbulent dissipation was studied for two different scales that show similar flow behavior. Breakup and coalescence of bubbles was not considered. A standard urn:x-wiley:16180240:media:elsc875:elsc875-math-0002 model was used for the simulation of turbulence and the mass transfer was assumed to be isotropic and turbulence driven. A minimalistic model was found, which was able to successfully predict the mass transfer behavior with high accuracy for the lab-scale bioreactor (2.3 L) covering a wide range of typical operating conditions. In the given setup, bubbles remained close to the sparger, almost not interfering with the impellers. This supports the assumption of monodisperse bubbles for stirrer speeds between 140 and 260 rpm. Simulation results of an 80 L stirred tank reactor (STR) revealed the need to integrate physical phenomena like breakup and coalescence and a more sophisticated prediction of the initial bubble size distribution. Two-phase Euler–Lagrange CFD simulations were performed for two differently scaled STRs and the mass transfer coefficient urn:x-wiley:16180240:media:elsc875:elsc875-math-0003 was calculated and compared to experiments in order to evaluate the applied models.