Media Preparation or Batching Area

For good housekeeping, all equipment should be on or above the floor and no pits should be used. On the other hand, grated trenches make it easy to clean the floors, and minimize the number of floor drains. 

000 gallons, the bottom head should be dished, the H/D ratio made 1 to 2, and airfoil type agitators used. 

The size and niunber of batching tanks depend upon whether the plant uses continuous sterilizers or batch sterilization. The difference is that in the latter case, the tanks can be large (5 0 to 80% of the size of the fermenter), and usually all the materials are mixed together. For continuous sterilizers, there is usually a minimum of four smaller tanks so that proteins, carbohydrates and salts can be batched and sterilized separately. In this case, the tanks are considerably smaller than the fermenter. 

The media preparation area is also where hydrolysates of proteins, and starches, as well as special processing of steep liquor, molasses and other crude materials takes place. Very strict accuracy of weights, volumes, pH adjustments and processing instructions are the first step to reproducible fermentation results. A well-run batching area depends upon purchasing a uniform quality of raw materials, adequate equipment, detailed batching 

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