MY FAVOURITE FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGY BOOK

In all my years learning and teaching fermentation technology, I have come across many many books on the subject. In my opinion the best book for fermentation technology is still the first edition of Stanbury & Whitaker's "Principles of Fermentation Technology published by Pergamon Press. It is still the classic undergraduate text for the subject


The book covers the field of fermentation technology from upstream , midstream to downstream activities. Mind you it even covers the economics of fermentation and treatment of fermentation effluent. Due to the range of the topics covered it does suffer the lack of depth of information required and thus it tends to give a light hearted and sketch treatment

Sometimes certain chapters are sort of irrelevant or not that important to the student of fermentation technology such as too comprehensive survey of the different valves and impellers in the fermentor

On the application of microbiology in the fermentation technology it has a good coverage but the authors failed to discuss in depth the theory and application of such microbiology information

Sometimes I feel that perusing through the book is like perusing through an advertisers catalogues or yellow pages in areas of downstream processing such as different type of homogenizers for cell disruption

There should be more worked out examples especially with regard to sterilization and holding times.
Topics like scaling ups and scalinh downs should be well covered
On the whole it is still the best book in fermentation technology in the market! Buy it! Especially the first edition copy