When we culture cells in bioreactor, we need to control the percentage of dissolved oxygen. This percentage of dissolved oxygen is dependent on pure oxygen or air? Moreover, what should be pumped into the bioreactor during cell culture, pure oxygen or air?
Hello, if requirement dissolved oxygen so it should be oxygen. The oxygen content in air 20.9% you can calculate how much air you need. If you can not reach required concentration by air you should use oxygen.
Hi Qiaoxiu - expressing oxygen solubilities in terms of percent saturation can be a bit confusing beucase it depends what your equilibrium concentration you are dealing with (ie. the medium you are using for aeration - air or O2). Karen is right - if you have medium saturated with atmospheric air this will be 20.9% O2 saturation or 100% air saturation. You can avoid this by just expressing DO in mg/L. For a mineral salt medium saturated with air at 30C the solubility should be around 7 mg/L - which is lower than the solubility in pure water beucase of a so-called "salting out" effect on gas solubility owing to the presence of electrolytes, proteins, etc.
If you need to maintain DO at 40% air saturation, I'd stick with atmospheric air and increase stirring speed (probably use a marine impeller for cell culture) if you can. Pure oxygen can create a pretty harsh environment for cells.
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