Judgment of fermentation endpoint! Concepts, principles, and influencing factors
1、 Overview of Fermentation Endpoint
The main indicators for optimizing the fermentation process are: (1) maximum product yield (or output), (2) maximum economic benefits, (3) lowest cost, and (4) best product quality
The determination of fermentation termination time is a comprehensive consideration of the above indicators: high productivity, low cost, and high profit are the criteria for determining the tank release time.
2、 Principles for determining the endpoint of fermentation
Determine the fermentation endpoint based on the fermentation type and production target. For fermentation varieties where fermentation and raw material costs account for the main part of the entire production cost, the main pursuit is to improve productivity (kg/m3 · h), yield (kg product/kg substrate), and fermentation coefficient (kg product/tank volume m3 · fermentation cycle h).
Downstream extraction and refining costs account for the main part and product prices are relatively expensive. In addition to high yield and fermentation coefficient, high product concentration is also required.
Production capacity (also known as productivity or yield): refers to the accumulation of products per unit volume of fermentation broth per unit time. In terms of productivity, the unit is generally g/(L · h) or kg/(m3 · h), the unit of product concentration is g/L or kg/m3, and the unit of fermentation time is h.
3、 Factors affecting the container release time
The reasonable canning time is determined by experiments, that is, the productivity and product cost of the fermentation tank are calculated based on the product yield obtained from different fermentation times, and the time with high productivity and low cost is used as the canning time.
1. The optimal fermentation time is the time when economic factors achieve maximum productivity at the lowest cost.
Shortening the fermentation cycle improves equipment utilization, but the increase in product yield per unit volume of fermentation broth is limited.
Extending the time leads to a decrease in average productivity, while costs such as power consumption, management expenses, and equipment consumption continue to increase, resulting in an increase in product costs.
2. The product quality factor is that the fermentation time is too short, leaving too many nutrients that have not yet been metabolized, which is not conducive to extraction and separation.
If the fermentation time is too long, the bacterial cells will self dissolve, releasing bacterial proteins or enzymes, changing the properties of the fermentation broth, increasing the difficulty of filtration, prolonging the filtration time, and destroying some unstable products.
Either too long or too short will result in a decrease in product quality and an increase in content.
3. Abnormal situations caused by special factors: bacterial infection, metabolic abnormalities (slow sugar consumption, etc.). To avoid losses, it is possible to salvage the situation by placing the cans in advance or delaying their release time.
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