Design and Construction of a Pneumatic Temporary Immersion Bioreactor System for the Multiplication of <i>Ananas comosus</i> var. Trujillana Red

Abstract

The present work initially identified the design parameters of a temporary immersion bioreactor to later scale it to a complete system for the in vitro multiplication of Ananas comosus var. Trujillana Red. Thus, a low-cost pneumatic temporary immersion bioreactor system was designed and built with 24 tanks of 2 L each. The automation of the system was designed and implemented by means of a timer circuit whose design parameters were: duration of the propagation process, which depends on the multiplication period of the crop and is an open variable, which means that the operator decides when to turn off the system; the duration of each dive, which for reasons of complexity of the algorithm was standardized as one minute; immersion frequency, which was programmed for intervals of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours respectively and duration of aeration, which from a test run times of 0.20 were chosen, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 seconds that correspond to the time of delivery of compressed air; additionally, the multiplication rate of Ananas comosus var. Trujillana Red in the immersion system which was 6.5 times per propagative unit inoculated in thirty days.