From lab to industry: scaling-up bioreactors for gas fermentations

Join the SBA Perth node for a fantastic seminar on taking our synthetic biology research to the next level! 

We are thrilled to have Dr. Lars Puiman from the University of Queensland join us this April for a talk all about working with and modelling for bioreactor-scale bioproduction (Abstract below). 

This is a hybrid event and you will be able to join the seminar online via MS Teams by registering here. The MS Teams links will be send out to registered attendees. 

Where?     Room 2.15, Bayliss Building, The University of Western Australia (MS Teams link available closer to the event)

When?      3-4 pm 

From lab to industry: scaling-up bioreactors for gas fermentations (Dr. Lars Puiman)

Fermentation of gaseous waste streams (containing CO, CO2, H2, CH4) has gained significant research and commercial attention in recent years. The low economic margins of gas fermentation processes necessitate the use of bioreactors with large volumes, e.g., the company LanzaTech converts CO into bioethanol in 500+ m3 bubble column-like bioreactors.

Scaling-up bioreactors to such large volumes is an uncertain practice. Typically, the ideal-mixing assumption does not hold anymore, and concentration gradients emerge, which are often associated with performance losses in bioprocesses. As bioreactor scale-up is often done on an empirical and rule-of-thumb basis, which do not account for the microbial experience, a novel approach has been developed to scale-up bioreactors more rationally.

High-resolution CFD simulations that combine hydrodynamic and metabolic are a promising tool to derisk scale-up. These predictions can be used to design scale-down studies that represent the actual industrial conditions already at lab-scale, allowing to study the effect of large-scale conditions on the microorganisms and the fermentation process.