IMPORTANCE OF FERMENTATION PILOT PLANT

Say, we have a fermentation process which we would like to commercialize. In order to commercialize it at the level of industrial manufacturing we have to build an industrial scale fermentation plant so that we can manufacture enough volume to be economically viable.

To build a large industrial scale manufacturing plant is not without risks. It involves huge capital investments in terms of millions of dollars. It would be risky to build such huge fermentation plants only to find out later that it could not operate efficiently as expected.

True! We do have some small laboratory scale fermentation studies to guide us. But it would still be risky. As fermentation behaviour at small laboratory scale often differ compared to those that occur in the huge industrial vats.

So we have a choice. Take a heavy risk and build the huge industrial fermentation plants based on data obtained from laboratory studies and PRAY to God that nothing disastrous would occur. Alternatively we could reduce the risks of building the huge industrial scale fermentation plants by doing extra studies on scaling up by using pilot scale fermentation plants. At least the data obtained would provide us further confidence to invest or abort the project.

WHAT IS A FERMENTATION PILOT PLANT?

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A fermentation pilot plant is a small fermentation processing system which is operated to generate information about the behavior of the fermentation system for use in design of larger industrial facilities

In fact fermentation pilot plant ‘mimic’ the industrial scale fermentation process by carrying out the industrial process on a smaller scale. Thus mimicking the industrial process and size is the main characteristics of pilot plant. However, the only difference pilot plant fermentation is still considered a research stage and not the final industrial production.

In trying to mimic the industrial scale fermentation the pilot plant show similar activities and equipments at mid stream and downstream facilities

FERMENTATION PILOT PLANT STUDIES

We carry out fermentation plant studies based on ‘uncertainties’ of what will the industrial scale fermentation plant will be like in reality.

How will the processes be similar or different from the smaller lab scale studies and how much changes will need to be executed at the various processes.

There are few crucial studies which will only be answered by carrying it out on the pilot plant such as:

1 Determining the various operational parameters for optimized oxygen supply to the fermentation process.

2 Selection of optimum operative modes of the fermentor

3 Determining the changes in rheological properties and its effect on the fermentation process.

4 Modeling and formulation of process controls

5 Sensors and controls

WHEN PILOT PLANT STUDIES ARE NOT NEEDED

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If a system is well defined and the engineering parameters are known, pilot plants are not used. For instance, a business that wants to expand production capacity by building a new plant that does the same thing as an existing plant may choose to not use a pilot plant.

ADVANTAGES OF USING FERMENTATION PILOT PLANT

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Adding the pilot plant studies would probably add up further costs but we would decrease the risks of huge financial disaster many times over if we do not carry out further pilot plant studies. Fermentation pilot plants are cheaper to build compared to building industrial scale plants. So even if we failed in the project it does not involve much capital loss. Using fermentation pilot plants we can tweak the design and work out any problems that arise before the design of the large industrial fermentors. Pilot fermentation plants will be able to provide additional useful data that is anticipated at the level of industrial scale such as reactions, corrosiveness and material properties among others

At the end of pilot plant studies, the pilot plant can still be used as additional manufacturing fermentors or for carrying out other tests and operating conditions

RENT OR BUILD YOUR PILOT PLANT?

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Many industries developing a product might find it too costly and uneconomically viable financially to set up pilot plant fermentation for one or two products. So they would rather invest in contractual work being carried out by commercial pilot plant facilities. They would get the services of experts, advance equipments and fermentors for a minimum investment.

Once this choice has been decided it would make more sense economically to hire or rent such pilot plant facilities. Pilot plants are very expensive to invest as it not only include a number of various sizes fermentors but also expensive down stream processing equipments and sophisticated analytical facilities

There are however advantages if we build our own pilot fermentation plants even though it is costly