Experiments

We ran several experiments throughout the development of the complete bioreactor. After the first few times, we realized that the pumps needed individual calibrations due to a slight error seen after a few days of running it. It was also observed that aeration pump was not fast enough and so, the same stepper motor was worked on and made faster, to aerate at 10 mL per minute. Meanwhile the spring structure of the pump was modified time and again to make a sturdy and stable structure.

Preliminery Runs

The first experiment was carried out using only the pumps and the stirrer, with continuous samples being manually taken to observe the OD using the laboratory spectrophotometer and monitor the growth. We used Escherechia Coli DH5alpha strain in LB medium and ran the experiments for 110 hours and obtained following results.

Plot of Optical Density versus Dilution rate

Final Experiment