ARE WE "UNDER USING" OUR FERMENTORS?

It seems it is the fashion nowadays that every biotechnology, microbiology, bioprocessing and chemical engineering laboratory would not want to be seen without having fermentors in their laboratories. Fermentors or bioreactors seemed to represent 'memberships' to the exclusive TECHNOLOGY CLUB. You will be highly regarded if you have fermentors in your laboratory! It does not matter if you are not operating it properly or under operating it! Most just regard by having fermentors in one's laboratory will AUTOMATICALLY qualify oneself as a fermentation technologist

Many know only how to start, monitor and terminate the fermentation process. They however do not know how to use the fermentors to fulfill their intended research or how to fine tune the fermentors to bring their fermentation research in the most economical, efficient way as to yield the most meaningful data. As a simple example, many would not know just how much fermentation broth would be needed for a correct fermentation run? There are the greedy researchers who would fill their fermentor to the brim short of over flowing. Then there are those who use very large fermentors just to carry out a small bench type of studies!

In reality most are not trained to run the fermentors properly or be creative in the use of the fermentors for research or solving industrial problems. In most cases these fermentors just become expensive ' white elephants' that adorn their laboratories!