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

[185009]
Title: Influence of Spacing of Multiple Impellers on Power Input in an Industrial‐Scale Aerated Stirred Tank Reactor.
Written by: Fitschen, J., Maly, M., Rosseburg, A., Wutz, J., Wucherpfennig, T., Schlüter, M.
in: <em>Chemie Ingenieur Technik</em>. (2020).
Volume: <strong>91</strong>. Number: (12),
on pages: 1794-1801
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cite.201900121
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Abstract: Despite the fact that aerated stirred tank reactors are widely used in industry and often studied, their design and scale-up still remains challenging. Especially the specific power input is a crucial and geometry-dependent scale-up parameter, usually calculated with the dimensionless power number Po. Within the scope of this study, the power number is measured for different stirrer types and configurations in a laboratory and an industrial-scale aerated stirred tank reactor. Good agreements to literature are found for the unaerated case for the two-stage stirrer configurations at different stirrer spacing for both scales. By literature only the aerated case in the laboratory scale can be predicted. Scale-up of an aerated industrial-scale reactor is challenging because of a specific influence of the aeration. In case of a three-stage Rushton configuration, an asymmetrical distribution of the stirrers should be preferred to ensure a high power number as well as good power performance under aerated conditions.