Industrial fermentation

Industrial fermentation is a chemical engineering term used to describe the processes that utilize a chemical change induced by a living organism or enzyme, in particular bacteria, yeasts, molds, or fungi, that produces a specific product.

Fermentation Schemes

Industrial fermentations may be carried out batchwise, as fed-batch operations, or as continuous cultures (Figure 1). Batch and fed-batch operations are quite common, continuous fermentations being relatively rare. For example, continuous brewing is used commercially, but most beer breweries use batch processes.

Typically, a pure starter culture (or seed), maintained under carefully controlled conditions, is used to inoculate sterile Petri dishes or liquid medium in the shake flasks. After sufficient growth, the preculture is used to inoculate the seed fermenter. Because industrial fermentations tend to be large (typically 150–250 m³), the inoculum is built up through several successively larger stages, to 5–10% of the working volume of the production fermenter.