Year: 2021-22

Company: Boehringer Ingelheim

Liaison(s): Benjamin Ko, Minni Aswath

Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), founded by Albert Boehringer in 1885, is the largest privately-owned pharmaceutical company in the world.  Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, BI is widely known for creating pharmaceutical products for application in both humans and animals, including focus on critical cardiometabolic, respiratory, nervous, and oncology diseases. BI prides itself on revolutionizing medicine by developing novel therapies and treatments for these conditions, as well as collaborating with an extensive network of partnerships. The BI TMP team was tasked to investigate the mixing for portable hold tanks used in various stages of the downstream manufacturing process through the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). ANSYS software was used to build the geometries for hold tanks of different sizes. Additionally, CFD was used to construct meshes for each tank, perform mesh-independent studies, analyze flow patterns and velocity profiles, and run mixing studies within each tank. The models ultimately allowed for the characterization of mixing in all tanks, which is vital in ensuring that pool homogeneity is achieved.  Completion of this project will allow BI to better understand tank mixing behavior and will aid in determining the accurate power numbers for impellers. The team is dedicated to enable model-based troubleshooting for BI in the event of mixing deviations, as well as implement more sophisticated models in their facilities.