Instrumentation

describes the equipment of a container (e.g. mixer, storage tank) or a bioreactor with sensors. Single-use bioreactors are not as highly instrumented and automated as their reusable counterparts. Standard parameters for process control in single-use bioreactors are temperature, pH value, flow rate, dissolved oxygen concentration, shaking frequency, filling volume, foam height or pressure. In addition, the weight of the reactor, conductivity, viscosity, as well as substrate and metabolite concentrations, can be recorded ¹⁵. Thereby, single-use bioreactors can be equipped with single-use or reusable in situ or ex situ sensors ⁴⁰. The number of available single-use sensors, however, is still relatively small compared to the number of reusable sensors. Furthermore, the type of sensor is predetermined by the manufacturer of the single-use bioreactor ¹⁵.