BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF FERMENTATION PROCESS

One of the first things the students taking fermentation technology will be the outline of the fermentation process flow. He will learn that the complete industrial fermentation process will be made up of three main stages:
1 Upstream activities
2 Midstream activities
3 Downstream activities
In any industrial fermentation process is seen as a pipeline of activities originating upstream with the fermentation products finally being obtained at the end of the pipe or at the downstream stage.
Thus in a simplification in the process flow we see masses being introduced into the process and as it flow down the pipe these masses are being transformed to the desired fermentation products by the fermentation microorganisms.
At each stage of the transformation optimal conditions are implemented not only to obtain the highest yield of the products but also in terms of energy and economic efficiency. This attempts can only be carried out if we assumed that the flow of substrates through the fermentation process will pass through various unit processes which could be identified and optimized.
In such situation, it is important that:
1 The flow of masses from the beginning stages to the final products will be smooth and not interrupted. To achieve this hydrodynamic flow restrictions imposed by various volumetric and hydrodynamic restrictions must be overcome by using different bioreactor or volumetric configurations
2 That each unit process is working under its optimal operating parameters such as temperature, mixing, ph, seeding etc
3 Elimination of physical and physiological bottlenecks in terms of pumping and even removing the effect of catabolite repressions or inhibitions
4 That the impact of any changes in upstream activities will affect the efficiency of the downstream activities. Any improvement or changes in upstream activities will affect downstream and not vice versa
5 That there must be allocation or allowances for changes even within this narrow range of optimized parameters



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