Year: 2019-20

Company: Boehringer Ingelheim

Liaison(s): Dominique Monteil, Brendan Lianoz, Daniel Bock

Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) is a privately owned pharmaceutical company founded in 1885 by Albert Boehringer. The company started with 28 employees and grew into a global enterprise that today is among the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world. BI has a pipeline that ranges from drugs for humans to veterinary-use therapeutics. BI is a world-leading biopharmaceutical contract manufacturer that offers its clients distinct contract development and manufacturing services, ranging the entire production technology chain.

BI must develop optimal processes that shorten product manufacturing time and assure quality to meet the product’s critical quality attributes. Media preparation is one of the key elements that can establish an efficient process. Not only does the composition of the media play a relevant role, but proper homogenization and optimal mixing time are also crucial determinants.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be a very useful tool when modeling media preparation, as it permits tank characterization that may not be achieved empirically with such precision and detail. Additionally, CFD can save resources and time as it provides a deep analysis using mainly computational power.

The goal of this Team Master’s Project is to characterize media preparation tanks using CFD simulations. Four different tanks will be assessed, and, within each tank, parameters like volume, agitation speed, impeller type, and impeller position will be taken into consideration. CFD will be used as a tool to obtain mixing time and power number. Velocity profile and optimization suggestions will also be included.