Biologics Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 2 validated, solved Biologics simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: water, ethanol. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: NRTL.
Continuous mAb: perfusion bioreactor into TFF concentration
The upstream and downstream halves of a biologics process on one canvas. A perfusion bioreactor produces a cell-free harvest, and the antibody in it is then concentrated by tangential-flow filtration — the step every biologics process ends with. The membrane is a per-species rejection, which is what makes UF/DF a genuine steady-state unit rather than something that has to be pretended into one: the antibody is fully retained while the spent substrate and lactate pass freely into the permeate. The split is not asserted — it follows from the concentration target, and the flux the membrane can actually deliver at the resulting wall concentration is what sets the area. The polarization is the point. Retained protein piles up at the membrane wall far above the bulk, and it is the wall concentration that sets the osmotic back-pressure — which is why ultrafiltration flux plateaus with pressure instead of rising with it, and why a specified-recovery membrane model cannot represent this step at all. Bounded, and inherited from the underlying model: no fouling or time-dependent resistance growth, and the virial coefficients that set a protein's osmotic pressure are caller inputs because they are measured per protein per formulation — no protein databank ships with this.
6 unit ops • NRTL
55 0
View & openMonoclonal antibody — perfusion culture to freeze-dried vial
A monoclonal antibody from the perfusion culture that makes it to the freeze-dried vial: culture → capture → viral inactivation → virus filtration → UF/DF → lyophilization. Every downstream step was a standalone calculator before this; wiring them together is what makes the train's numbers agree with each other — raise the culture's productivity and the capture column, the filter area and the vial count all move with it. The protein enters as a product, not a feed. No property databank carries a 148 kDa antibody (a biomolecule databank is a licensed-data gap, not a missing formula), so the mAb is produced by the bioreactor rather than declared on a feed — a feed component has to be priced thermodynamically, and this one cannot be. Capture (PROTEIN_A). Sized on dynamic binding capacity via Bohart-Adams, the model derived for the near-irreversible isotherm a Protein A resin has — the rigorous bed PDE does not converge at a ~1e-3 g/L dissociation constant, so the method here is the one process development actually uses. Titre and harvest volume come from the feed stream, so changing the upstream titre resizes the column. Viral inactivation (LOW_PH_HOLD). The kill is biphasic: the resistant fraction imposes a hard −log₁₀(f) ceiling, so a longer hold stops helping. single-population fit would promise unlimited kill and justify a hold that cannot deliver — raise target_log_reduction past the ceiling and the step says so instead of reporting a number. Virus filtration (VIRUS_FILTER). Sized on capacity, not flux: the filter plugs, so throughput climbs toward Vmax and never past it. That is why more pressure does not rescue an undersized filter, and why the step reports throughput against capacity. UF/DF (UFDF). Film-theory polarization and the virial osmotic-pressure flux equation solved together — which is what produces the pressure-independent plateau that defines ultrafiltration. Raise the TMP and watch the flux barely move while the wall concentration climbs; raise the mass-transfer coefficient (crossflow) instead and it responds. The reverse-osmosis membrane op structurally cannot show that. Freeze drying (LYO). Primary drying by the Pikal vial model, with the collapse margin the cycle actually has to respect. Push the shelf temperature up and the cycle shortens right up until the product crosses its collapse temperature and the batch is lost. No biologics data ships, deliberately. Every number that decides an answer here — resin capacity and rate constant, the virus kill rate and Vmax, the protein's second virial coefficient, the vial heat-transfer coefficient and cake resistance — is measured for your molecule, your resin, your dryer. The values in this example are illustrative and each step refuses rather than defaulting when one is missing. Bounds. Screening-grade process development, not a tech-transfer package: pH elution is a declared yield rather than a desorption model, the ICH Q5A clearance budget across steps lives in the Viral clearance tool (a budget spans steps), and no GMP artefacts — batch records, 21 CFR Part 11 — exist here.
13 unit ops • NRTL
51 0
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