Abstract
Many current industrial fermentation processes suffer from product toxicity to the microorganism and/or product degradation. One way of circumventing this problem is the removal of product during fermentation, better known as in situ product removal (ISPR). In this work we discuss the application of ISPR to the production of the amino acid phenylalanine. The objective is twofold: to improve the fermentation productivity by removing the inhibiting product and to reduce the downstream processing steps by obtaining the product already in crystal form. Based on the fermentation and crystallisation characteristics of the system, a process configuration consisting of an external cooling crystallisation loop was selected. Modelling results showed that the product concentration in the fermenter could be reduced and that 43.6% of the total phenylalanine produced could be directly recovered as crystals. Additionally, the productivity of the system increased to 0.72 g/L/h compared to 0.67 g/L/h in the process without ISPR. Further improvement possibilities are briefly discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | D-38 |
| Pages (from-to) | 975-980 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | VDI Berichte |
| Issue number | 1901 II |
| Publication status | Published - 2005 |
| Externally published | Yes |