Large scale fermenters design

Coupled with the realization that microorganisms can be a unique source of certain desirable oils, has been the advent of large-scale fermentation technology throughout the latter half of the last century. This has culminated in the ability to design, buUd, and operate purpose-designed fermenters in excess of 1,000,000-L capacity for the production of microorganisms to provide a variety of products. A simple calculation tells us that a 1000-m fermenter that produces 100-g cells/L in 4 days would yield a 100 tons of biomass with, perhaps, 40 tons of oil an annual... 

These materials would primarily be used in large scale fermentations. The economic implications of a fermentation medium on the profitability of a process have to be considered before fermentation process design can be started. 

For the optimum design of a production-scale fermentation system (prototype), we must translate the data on a small scale (model) to the large scale. The fundamental requirement for scale-up is that the model and prototype should be similar to each other. 

Stirred-tank bioreactors are widely used in the modern biotechnological industry. Most products produced from animal cells on a large scale worldwide are manufactured in this type of bioreactor. In general, these reactors are very similar to fermenters used in industrial submerged culture of microorganisms, and are simple to design, having the shape of a tank and impellers to promote mixture of the contents. 

---