Biocatalysis reactions, involved with natural or engineered enzymes and engineered microorganisms, has large potentials in industry because the use of less toxic reagents and operation under ambient temperature/pressure. Hence it is necessary to develop successful large-scale procedures to produce bio-industrial products. Yet the challenge to bring a biocatalysis reaction from the laboratory scale to industrial scale is usually enormous. Factors including feedstock availability and cost, biocatalyst design, process integration and others need to be considered and optimized.

Suitable bioreactors are developed for industrial scale up to support a biologically active environment. They can be categorized into three types: (i) batch fermenters, (ii) continuous fermenters and (iii) recycle reactors. Typical examples of them are airlift bioreactors, tower fermenters, plug flow reactors, packed bed bioreactors, fluidized bed bioreactors, stirred tank bioreactors, and others. The size of a bioreactor depends on the purpose of use, varying from 1 liter to more than 500,000 liters. A typical biosynthesis process comprises three steps: (i) upstream processing, such as medium preparation, sterilization, and air purification; (ii) production processing to convert substrates to desired product; (iii) downstream processing, such as separation and purification. Each step need to be optimized for various purposes.

Creative Enzymes offers the service to scale up an existing biocatalysis process and to perform large-scale fermentation/biocatalysis. With 10 years of experience in biocatalysis process development and consulting, we offer professional one-stop solutions:

• Cell line, media and equipment preparation/optimization.
• Production route optimization.
• Process monitoring and control.
• Pilot/plant scale production.

Related sections

Industrial Enzyme Production