What is ultrasonic crushing?
Cell fragmentation is an important step in the production process of recombinant proteins. For decades, ultrasound cell fragmentation has been a laboratory scale selection method. This process requires high ultrasonic amplitude suitable for cell suspension, generating significant shear forces. Shear force is the result of strong ultrasonic cavitation, which generates intense asymmetric implosion vacuum bubbles and causes micro jets, causing cell wall rupture. However, due to the limitations of traditional ultrasonic technology, the industrial implementation of this method cannot fail to reduce the amplitude of ultrasonic waves and the strength of shear forces generated by cavitation, thus damaging the efficiency of the cracking process. Industrial scale ultrasonic cell lysers have the same lysis efficiency as laboratory equipment, while providing higher productivity.
Traditional ultrasonic liquid processing systems include ultrasonic tool heads with reduced diameter in the output direction, and can only provide high ultrasonic amplitude when the output end is very small. The process amplification requires switching to a tool head with a larger output diameter, which can output ultrasonic energy to a larger volume of processing liquid while still maintaining high amplitude. However, if the output diameter of traditional tool heads is increased to an industrially acceptable size, their maximum amplitude will significantly decrease and not be sufficient to damage cells. Therefore, the use of traditional high amplitude ultrasonic processors is limited to laboratory studies that cannot be directly amplified. Through the research and development of FUNSONIC, this limitation has been successfully overcome, and pilot and industrial scale ultrasonic processors have been constructed, which can generate extremely high amplitudes and operate continuously.
Destruction of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells:
We conducted ultrasonic fermentation experiments using our experimental level ultrasonic liquid processor and pilot scale ultrasonic processor, and obtained the following data:
Suspend the initial excipient crystals with an average particle size of 15.4 microns in an organic solvent with a mass fraction of 5%. No surfactants or other agents were used. The suspension is circulated through the reactor chamber at a rate of 4l/min in the storage tank and stirred for 2 hours. The reaction chamber is equipped with a diamond shaped barbell horn with a diameter of 32 millimeters and an amplitude of 90 microns. Throughout the operation, the cooling water is controlled by the temperature control of the reaction chamber to flow through the casing, maintaining the temperature of the suspension at 25 ° C.
After 2 hours of ultrasonic treatment, the average particle size required is about 0.4 micrometers (400 nanometers). For industrial scale production, this program can use a 3000W industrial ultrasonic processor, which will increase productivity by 5 times.
Ultrasound is a simple and effective method for preparing shaped nanocrystals. Through the use of diamond tool heads, this process can be directly extended, making it possible to achieve laboratory results in industrial production environments.
