Bringing Stainless Sartorius Reactors Out Of Retirement

Discover how two companies leveraged drop-in replacement controllers to un-retire their reactors after Sartorius exited the stainless steel reactor market

Sartorius sold thousands of Biostat B and C stainless systems over last couple of decades. The tanks range from 15 to 40 liters and are extremely well designed and are built to last indefinitely with proper maintenance. While the tanks are great, the electronics/DCUs are dated and have the reached the point where Sartorius has had to end support due to the age and lack of available parts.

Fortunately, we at ILS have a solution. We have replaced the controller for dozens of these systems and brought them out of retirement. The strategy and product have been so successful that a single customer ordered more than 20 replacement controllers.

Custom Fermentation Control System

ILS creates a custom “Moo Box” controller to simulate a cow’s stomach for development of new feeding strategies

“How do we more efficiently experiment on the digestive process of cows?”

To help answer this question, ILS worked with the customer to develop a semi-custom fermentation control system that allows them to run hundreds of feeding strategy experiments in the time they used to be able to run about a dozen.

The process begins when a sample of a cow’s digested feed is taken through a fistula (a surgically-inserted port that gives access to the cow’s first stomach, or rumen).

Custom Benchtop Controllers for Cell Culture Process Development

ILS designs bioreactor platform that supports reactors from 1L to 15L

A large biotechnology company required a ‘flexible’ benchtop bioreactor platform that could work with a variety of reactor types, sizes and vendors. ILS provided the AFC 917 benchtop controller that can accommodate blanket or jacketed reactors from 1 liter to 15 liters for cell culture process development.

A separate Gas Box includes 6 Brooks Instrument gas flow controllers. A ‘large’ and ‘small’ Air and O2 allow for accurate control of the various sized reactors. Also included are two manifolds with solenoid valves controlled through the HMI that allow gas mixing between two separate outputs for sparge and/or sparge/overlay.

Startup Seed Train: Confidence In A Purpose

ILS helped a biotech startup develop an environmentally-friendly, fully biodegradable plastic straw.

The customer in this story is not just another start-up in the biotech world. Already successful from previous ventures, the company founders started this business because they wanted to make a positive impact on the environment. Their goal was to develop a fully biodegradable plastic with the same manufacturing properties as petroleum-based plastics.

Originally, one of the target applications was to replace the plastic lining used in paper coffee cups. The lining is nearly invisible, but when you compost paper coffee cups, you will end up with a non-compostable plastic bag. What the founders couldn’t foresee was the recent headlines banning plastic drinking straws along many of the ocean-neighboring states.

Contract Manufacturer: Bioreactor Controller Rebuild

ILS helped a leading manufacturer of USDA-licensed biologicals un-retire an 800L reactor

A process control systems rebuild helped a leading manufacturer of USDA-licensed biologicals improve batch consistency. They had an 800 liter microbial, 30+ year-old stainless steel, steam-in-place (SIP) reactor that was mechanically sound but in need of a new controller. ILS provided process automation solutions that improved their batch consistency with affordable, semi-custom replacement hardware and software.

Control & Data Management: Batch Control Integrator

ILS brings together data from numerous different systems, providing control & data management

ILS worked as a batch control integrator to provide this customer with the ability to bring together data from numerous different systems and pieces of equipment.

Typically, a customer has a variety of bioreactor vendors and instruments that require integration. Batch Expert+, our real-time web-based SCADA software, is equipment-independent and can incorporate data through OPC or direct serial interfaces. Batch Expert+ includes a built-in OPC UA server to provide data to external systems.

Advanced Control and Diagnostics Platform

A global chemical company required a platform to develop advanced custom automation control and diagnostics applications. ILS worked with the company to develop toolkits that are used by site engineers to quickly develop applications. The toolkits are based on Ignition by Inductive Automation and work in a highly automated environment in cooperation with a Distributed Control System (DCS) and plant wide data historian. The toolkits rely on all the standard capabilities of Ignition such as built-in historian, high performance OPC and database integration, and powerful graphical user interface tools. The toolkits also highlight ILS Automation’s unique ability to develop custom modules that extend the capability of Ignition.