If you increase the diameter of a Pioreactor vial, the maximum optical density that it is able to measure will decrease. I imagine you could increase the brightness of the OD LEDs to compensate, but there is going to be a limit to how bright & large you can go. We’d like a 1000L Pioreactor, and I’m sure that exceeds the limit.
So we’ve been working on Pioflo.org - a project to develop a flow through cell version of the Pioreactor that allows you everything you can do in a regular 20ml Pioreactor, while pumping solution in from a larger fermentation vessel & back. This effectively means we can control almost any size of CSTR with minimal modifications to the Pioreactor hardware and software.
We proved TRL4 for this with 1L of kombucha in a grant application that we put in with KIRDI and other partners, which I’ve just written up for you at Pioflo.org
It would be wonderful to meet up and see what you’re all working on, perhaps we could combine efforts?