Data for: Pros and cons of airlift and bubble column bioreactors: How internals improve performance

Gas fermentation is a promising technology of high commercial interest, particularly for capturing CO2 and CO from industrial off-gases to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to replace fossil fuels for bulk chemical production. Therefore, the ad initio evaluation of promising bioreactor settings is a crucial step.

Whereas alternate configurations may be tested in laborious scale up studies, the tedious procedure may be accelerated by in silico studies that accompany or even partially replace wet-lab work. In this context, the current study compares various pneumatically agitated reactor types - bubble column reactor (BCR), annulus- and center-rising internal-loop airlift reactor (AR-IL-ALR and CR-IL-ALR), and external-loop airlift reactor (EL-ALR) - to identify advantages and disadvantages for the given application based on computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models.