SCP from hydrocarbons

One can generalize, saying that, in a developed country environment, SCP from hydrocarbons is not commercially viable at this time. However, in certain limited circumstances, in countries with low raw material costs, with low utilities costs, or where hard currency is scarce, SCP often can be justified economically. British Petroleum and ICI have maintained programs to obtain regulatory permission of their products through extensive testing. This has been successful throughout Europe with the notable exception of Italy. 

Large-scale SCP production processes for growing yeasts of the genus Candida from hydrocarbon substrates were developed by British Petroleum Co., Ltd. and Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry, Ltd. of Japan (57). However, the 100,000-t/yr capacity plants based on these processes, and constmcted in Sardinia and Italy, were abandoned because of regulatory agency questions regarding residual hydrocarbon contents of the products (2,3). 

Without knowing the detailed metabolic pathways, many fermentative products today are obtained via aerobic fermentation processes. Probably the largest scale, single product aerobic fermentations are those used to produce single cell protein (SCP), or yeast biomass from hydrocarbons [63]. Here, an aerated yeast suspension in water, which contains trace nutrients is used to generate yeast biomass from gas oil, a mixture of straight chain hydrocarbons in the Cn to C20 range (Eq. 16.23). 

Development of technology to produce SCP from cellulose remains commercially elusive. However, in view of the expected life span of hydrocarbon resources. 

In order to determine the viability of SCP development, it is necessary to understand how SCP fits into the protein supplement market and how the market is projected to develop. At this time, from hydrocarbon substrates in general, SCP is not commercially viable. With normal paraffins costing in excess of... 

The advantage of low cost substrates, however, was offset by the sizeable expenditure for processing. Under pressure from the farmers lobby (under the pretext high cancer risks), ridiculously high demands on the purification of products were made, which put the limit for residual hydrocarbon far below that of common baker s yeast. Economic reasons were also responsible for the failure of the new branch of industry to develop. SCP triggered off a massive technological advance in the construction of reactor vessels and in process... 

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