Pharma stirring tanks are used for the preparation of liquid formulations such as suspensions, emulsions, and solutions. They are a critical component in the pharmaceutical manufacturing process and play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products. The stirring function of the tank is important for ensuring that the formulation is homogenous, meaning that all the components are well dissolved or suspended in an optimum time and evenly distributed throughout the liquid. This is important for ensuring that the medication is effective and that each dose contains the appropriate amount of active ingredient.

CFD simulations are a very useful tool to predict the parameters of a mixing process from a stirring tank, such as: turbulence, Reynolds number, energy dissipation rate per mass unit, mixer power number, etc. Because sometimes you need to run a lot of simulations on different tank geometries and mixer models combinations, this could lead to quite high costs. This is why we have developed an innovative metamodel for the Millipore Novaseptic® mixers, based on hundreds of simulations performed on different geometries. We have integrated this metamodel into an application, where the users could introduce the tank diameter, the liquid properties, choose the mixer model, and will obtain as results the mixing parameters.

Dr. sc. Jörg Helfenstein studierte an der Abteilung für Maschineningenieurwesen der ETH Zürich und führte seine Dissertation am Institut für Mechanik der ETH Zürich durch. Seit 2012 arbeitet er für die CADFEM (Suisse) AG als Berechnungsingenieur, seit 2013 als Teamleiter Professional Development. An der ZHAW School of Engineering in Winterthur wirkt er seit 2013 als IMES Lehrbeauftragter. Aktuelle Themenbereiche seiner Arbeit für die CADFEM (Suisse) AG umfassen die Modellierung und Simulation von nichtlinearen strukturmechanischen Systemen und von kurzfaserverstärkten Kunststoffen, sowie Automatisierung und numerische Optimierung

MSc. Dipl. Phys. Eng. Cosmin Vatra | Studies: Bucharest University – Physics Faculty MSc. Diplomat Physics Engineer (1992 - 1997)

Relevant experience:

2003-2011 – Having my own company, I worked in research projects for different institutes and designed different complex systems for private companies

2011-2019 – I started to work in the pharma and biopharma sectors providing the following expertise:

• Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations
• Pharma Process Engineering: 
• process design (compounding plants, water loops, clean utilities distribution, etc.)
• pipe flow calculations 
• P&ID design 
• 3D CAD design

2011-2019 – I joined Aseptconn A.G. where I developed, and I am coordinating, a small engineering department for CFD simulations and pipe flow calculations. I have developed commercial CFD services for the pharma industry especially for mixing applications (stirred tanks, bioreactors, fermenters). In this way, Aseptconn became the official CFD services supplier for Merck KGaA Darmstadt Germany, the producer of Novaseptic® magnetic mixers. I created AseptSoft®, an innovative software plugin for Visio and Auto-CAD, which accelerates 100 times the pharma process design over a P&ID, and automatically generates the functional specifications for IOQ.