Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
4752161 Biochemical Engineering Journal 2017 7 Pages PDF
Abstract

•Pellet growth and inhibition kinetics of Neurospora intermedia was investigated.•pH, aeration, substrate and product concentration affected fungi pellet growth.•The maximum growth rate of N. intermedia at optimal product pH was 0.318 h−1.•Findings from this study can be used for optimization of N. intermedia fermentation.

Pellet morphology formation by filamentous fungi has gained a lot of attention because of its multiple benefits such as the ease of separation and smaller bioreactor volume requirement. Most reported kinetics studies on fungal pellet growth are centred on aeration, despite the experimental results pointing to the importance of other factors such as pH, substrates and product concentration etc., influencing the pellet formation. Hence a kinetic study on the effect of multiple factors such as aeration, substrate and product concentration and pH was done in this paper using Neurospora intermedia as a model organism, whose ability to form mycelial pellets was recently reported. The maximum growth rate of the pellets under uninhibited conditions at its optimal growth pH was 0.318 h−1. The pellets were found to be inhibited by high product (ethanol) concentration with no growth occurring at 70 g L−1 and above. High substrate concentration favoured the formation of loose fur-like fluffy pellets. The specific oxygen uptake rate of the pellets was between 0.27-0.9 mmol-O2 g-biomass−1h−1 depending on the pellet average diameter. The results from this kinetic study can be used for bioreactor design, operations and optimization of fermentation processes utilizing N. intermedia.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (162KB)Download full-size image

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Chemical Engineering Bioengineering
Authors
, , , ,