Reactor Configuration for Continuous Fermentation in Immobilized Systems: Application to Lactate Production

There is great commercial interest in using immobilization technology for fermentation processes. Microbial immobilization is one of the novel methods in fermentation technology, especially important in the food and beverage industry, which allows the use of increased cell concentrations in the bioreactor, reducing process cycle times and increasing volumetric bioreactor productivity as compared with traditional batch and chemostat methods of fermentation. Results from bioreactor studies have demonstrated that immobilized cells have advantages over free cells, such as protection from toxic substances, increased plasmid stability and increased catalytic activity (1 ). Because of these advantages, methods employing immobilized microbial cells are used extensively in many industrial applications.