Fermenter buildings

Fermenters can be located outdoors in most countries ofthe world. The working platforms usually are enclosed and heated in temperate zones, and only shaded in more tropical zones. In more populated areas, open fermenter buildings make too much noise for local residents. The environmental awareness, or the tolerance of the public, could preclude open fermenter buildings in the friture. Odor is also offensive to the public. The environmental authorities are demanding that equipment be installed to eliminate the offensive odor ofthe off-gases. (Noise levels inside a fermenter building will be greater than 90 dBA if no preventive measures are taken.)... 

Selenium is a vital microelement for people. It has dual properties. Selenium is an essential nutrient at low concentration levels and it becomes toxic at higher concentration levels. Deficiency of selenium results in weakness and hard diseases. Selenium is a building material of many hormones and ferments it neutralizes free radicals, radioactive radicals in organism. The range of selenium safety concentration in food and water is very narrow. The daily normal amount of human consumption of selenium is 10-20 p.g, maximum safe concentration of selenium in water is 5-10 p.g/1. It becomes toxic at 20-30 p.g and bigger content in different objects. 

As a rule of thumb, total investment of the fermentation plant is 50 dollars per litre of bioreactor. This means the total costs of investment are 200,000 x 50 = 10 million dollars. This figure includes all costs concerning engineering, fermentation equipment, recovery equipment, buildings land, etc. 

Upstream processing (fermentation) and downstream processing (purification and formulation) are physically separated, by being undertaken in separate buildings. Fermentation is generally undertaken in specially designed 42 000 1 stainless steel vessels. After recovery of the product from the cells, a number of chromatographic purification steps are undertaken, essentially within... 

Hydroxypropionic Acid (3-HPA). Like the structurally isomeric lactic acid, 3-HPA constitutes a three-carbon building block with the potential of becoming a key intermediate for a variety of high-volume chemicals malonic and acrylic acids, methacrylate, acrylonitrile, 1,3-propanediol, and so forth.Thus, Cargill is developing a low-cost fermentation route by metabolic engineering of the microbial... 

Itaconic Acid. Structurally an a-substituted methacrylic acid, itaconic acid constitutes a C5 building block with significant market opportunities. It is currently produced via fungal fermentation at about 10,000 t/a and mainly used as a specialty comonomer in acrylic or methacrylic resins, as incorporation of small amounts of itaconic acid into polyacrylonitrile significantly improve their dyeability. 

Semi-synthetic penicillins are accessed from 6-aminopenicillanic acid, (6-APA), derived from fermented penicillin G. Starting materials for semi-synthetic cephalosporins are either 7-aminodesacetoxycephalosporanic acid (7-ADCA), which is also derived from penicillin G or 7-aminocephalosporanic acid (7-ACA), derived from fermented cephalosporin C (Scheme 1.10). These three key building blocks are produced in thousands of tonnes annually worldwide. The relatively labile nature of these molecules has encouraged the development of mild biocatalytic methods for selective hydrolysis and attachment of side chains. 

The model of Beck and Bauer (1989) predicts the ethanol productivity, and the ethanol concentrations in the bed and the condensate, assuming equilibrium conditions in an anaerobic gas-solid fluidized bed fermenter using a partial condenser (see Figure 6.6). This model does not predict the build-up of ethanol in the bed nor the increase in the rate of ethanol production at the partial condenser. Rather, it is assumed that this start-up phase is already complete, and that the ethanol concentration in the bed and the rate of ethanol production at the partial... 

Carbon dioxide build-up in the fermenter is ignored in the model and it is assumed that atmospheric pressure prevails at all points in the system. The partial pressures of ethanol and water vapour over the bed are evaluated at the bed temperature using... 

Butanol, which at one time was an unwanted by-product in the preparation of acetone, is now the most important product of the fermentation. The building of a large new factory in Puerto Rico using 10,000 tons of molasses per annum for its production is an indication of this importance. Butanol is probably still the best solvent for cellulose nitrate lacquers. Dibutyl phthalate is certainly the most widely used plasticizer for synthetic resins, and butyl oleate, tributyl citrate and dibutyl tartrate have also been described as plasticizers. Another important use of butanol is as a source of butadiene, which serves as an intermediate in the conversion of sucrose into a synthetic rubber. Although in recent years other methods have been described for the preparation of butanol (for example, from ethyl alcohol and from acetylene), yet the fermentation of carbohydrates is still the cheapest process. 

As already known, amino acids are the building units of peptides and proteins and they play an important plastic, energetic, and regulatory role in all living organisms. Almost all foods contain amino acids, either in the bound (partially hydrolyzed or intact proteins) or in the free form. High amounts of free amino acids can be found in some fermented foodstuffs as a consequence of proteolytic processes. 

---