Webinars

Best Practices for Bioreactor CFD

M-Star President John Thomas shares best practices for bioreactor CFD simulation, covering the entire process from model setup to post-processing. Special emphasis is placed on process scale-up and scale-down, as well as bioprocess intensification. (27 March 2025)

Interfacial Mass Transfer in Gas-Liquid Systems

M-Star President John Thomas discusses interfacial mass transfer within the context of free-surface and sparged-gas systems. The webinar covers the physics driving mass transfer, as well as approaches for modeling these physics in industrial engineering systems. Emphasis is given to dissolved oxygen and CO2 transfer, as related to cell growth and pH control. (27 February 2025)

Modeling Chemical Reactions in Turbulent Flows

M-Star President John Thomas discusses chemically reactive turbulent flows in the context of industrial scale CFD. The webinar covers explicit and implicit approaches for modeling fast competitive reactions, as well as the competition between mixing and reaction kinetics in both single and multiphase systems. It also includes approaches for handling equilibrium reactions. (30 January 2025)

DNS and LES CFD on GPUs

M-Star President John Thomas discusses direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large eddy simulation (LES) within the context of industrial scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The analysis includes a discussion of length scales relevant to turbulent flows, as well as the influence of LES filtering on the predicted velocity fields. Whereas previous investigations into DNS and LES modeling approaches have focused primarily on academic systems, these high-fidelity modeling applications are discussed within the context of industrial scale. (19 December 2024)

Advanced Convective Heat Transfer in Turbulent Flows

M-Star President John Thomas discusses advanced convective heat transfer in turbulent flows. This webinar is a longer form addition to a talk given at the AICHE Meeting in San Diego 2024. This work introduces a generalized, first-principles approach to predict convective heat transfer coefficients in turbulent systems using large eddy simulation combined with high-resolution lattice-Boltzmann methods (LBM). Moving beyond traditional empirical correlations, this approach directly connects local heat transfer rates to energy dissipation rates near boundaries, offering system-independent predictions. (21 November 2024)

Modeling HVAC Systems using Real-time CFD

M-Star President John Thomas presents on analyzing flow in HVAC systems using real-time CFD. The analysis includes computing velocity and temperature distributions, as well as predicting particular counts and path lines. This discussion is particularly relevant to engineers and scientists working in the areas of human comfort, architectural design, facility design, and ventilation engineering. (26 October 2024)

Residence Time Distributions, Mean-Age Analysis, and Flow Characterization in Open Systems

M-Star President John Thomas presents a lively presentation on how to analyze flow through an open system. This includes computing residence time distributions, calculating mean-age distribution, and analyzing particle lifelines. This discussion is particularly relevant for continuous manufacturing, waste-water treatment, and HVAC systems. (26 September 2024)

Bioreactor Digital Twins

M-Star goes to Asia for this webinar installment. President John Thomas presents a CFD-based bioreactor model for predicting chemically reactive turbulent flows with in-line process control. It accurately forecasts hydrodynamic properties, interfacial mass transfer, and pH buffer reactions, proving valuable for exploring process scale-up strategies. (5 September 2024)

Enterprise Deployment of CFD Models

M-Star hosts a symposium showcasing the best practices, emerging technology, and new developments which enable enterprise-wide deployment of computational workflows. The symposium includes an exciting lineup of speakers from the industry, including experts in scientific visualization, CFD algorithm development, and data science. (25 July 2024)

Photorealistic Rendering of Simulations: How M-Star Make Incredible Movies

Application Engineer Johannes Wutz of M-Star Europe discusses how to set up photorealistic renderings of CFD data. He explains how GPU-native simulations can create multidimensional imaging, giving scientists and engineers a better understanding of the physical process. In particular, Wutz explores representing volumetric data, choosing the optimal parameters for smooth animation, and building a scene (set up, lighting, ray tracing). (27 June 2024)

Real-Time Modeling of Crystal Nucleation, Growth, and Breakage in an Agitated Bioreactor

M-Star President John Thomas presents on real-time modeling of crystal nucleation, growth, and breakage in an agitated bioreactor. Thomas discusses crystallization, including particle nucleation and growth, in supersaturated solutions; and how to incorporate particle growth dynamics into time-accurate flow simulations. He also explores species transport, particle nucleation/transport, and particle breakup. (23 May 2024)

Predicting Blend Times and Transport in Non-Newtonian Fluids

M-Star President John Thomas presents on predicting blend times and transport in non-Newtonian fluids. Learn how lattice-Boltzmann simulation can optimize process yield in rheologically complex processing environments. (25 April 2024)

Particle Suspension, Settling, and Dissolution Processes

M-Star President John Thomas presents on particle suspension, settling, and dissolution processes. Thomas explores tracer particles, inertial particles, and DEM particles, highlighting the differentiation between resolved and unresolved particles based on their size relative to the computational grid. (28 March 2024)

Two-phase Flows in Bioreactors and Fermentors

M-Star President John Thomas presents on predicting gas-liquid mass transfer rates in reactors using a bubble parcel model. Learn how lattice-Boltzmann simulations can optimize aeration and fluid flow in aerobic and microaerobic fermentation processes, enhancing productivity and predictive accuracy. (29 February 2024)

Real-time CFD-Bioreactor Models with Integrated Process Control

M-Star President John Thomas highlights the transformative role of digital twins in reactor modeling. Emphasizing a physics-based modeling approach over traditional methods, Thomas focuses on solving governing equations for transport to closely mirror physical outcomes. The integration of GPU computing was showcased, particularly in simulating slurry systems, bioreactors, and various reactor configurations, demonstrating the potential of digital twins to revolutionize reactor design and control. (25 January 2024)

Convective Heat Transfer

M-Star President John Thomas presents a brief look at the transition from CPU to GPU usage in state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics. He then demonstrates how this applies to convective heat transfer using high fidelity modeling frameworks. (26 July 2023)