Fermentation equipment capabilities

The engineer s contribution to the development of the penicillin fermentation was a very important one. The outgrowth of the undertaking was the pure-culture technique, carried out in aerated and agitated deep-tank fer-mentors. This technique, similar to its antecedent used for yeast propagation, introduced to the biochemical process industry refined fermentation equipment capable of being maintained under aseptic conditions even when vigorously aerated. The technique has now been applied widely with minor modifications to the production of other antibiotics, amino acids, steroids, enzymes, and therapeutic proteins. 

Superior penicillin producing cultures ate capable of producing in excess of 30 mg/mL of penicillin G (154). Cephalosporin producing strains, however, generally grow poorly and cephalosporin C production is not as efficient as is that of penicillin. Factors such as strain maintenance, strain improvement, fermentation development, inoculum preparation, and fermentation equipment requkements ate discussed in the hterature (3,154). 

A submerged fermentation is the most common technique used today for the production of all kinds of vinegar. The Frings Acetator is the best-designed equipment capable of automated operation (Ebner et al. 1996). It is mainly used for production of alcohol vinegar but also can be used for conversion of alcoholic mashes of fruits and grains. By 1993, more than 600 acetator units were in operation worldwide with a total vinegar production of about 135 x 10 1 per year (Ebner et al. 1996). 

The Thorold plant " was designed to produce 2000 gallons per day, but improvements in the process have shown that the equipment is capable of producing much more than that amount. The plant uses batch fermentation and reuses yeast according to the Melle process. Claims are made for the production of alcohol at costs as low as 12.4 cents per gallon. 

There are usually problems scaling up new fermentations as well as with translation of process-improvement data for well-established fermentations from laboratory operations to existing plant equipment.24 In general, fermentations are scaled up on the basis of achieving similar oxygen transfer capabilities in the plant equipment that proved to be optimal at the bench scale. 

To be cost effective, the process must use organisms capable of fermenting the full spectrum of five- and six-carbon sugars released from cellulose and hemicellulose. The advent of efficient genetically engineered organisms equipped with metabolic pathways to handle both types of sugars is an important... 

Reverse micelles are self-organized aggregates of amphiphilic molecules that provide a hydrophilic nano-scale droplet in apolar solvents. This polar core accommodates some hydrophilic biomolecules stabilized by a surfactant shell layer. Furthermore, reverse micellar solutions can extract proteins from aqueous bulk solutions through a water-oil interface. Such a liquid-liquid extraction technique is easy to scale up without a loss in resolution capability, complex equipment design, economic limitations and the impossibility of a continuous mode of operation. Therefore, reverse micellar protein extraction has great potential in facilitating large-scale protein recovery processes from fermentation broths for effective protein production. 

When a winery considers investment in laboratory equipment, a compound microscope should be a priority. Microscopic capabilities allow winemakers to quickly monitor the progress of alcoholic and malolactic fermentations and to tentatively determine the source of microbiological problems. This chapter oudines basic microscopy as well as techniques to view wine microorganisms. 

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