Life cycle design of bioprocess system applying simulation-based approach

• Published in: Computer Aided Chemical Engineering Vol. 53; pp. 2593 - 2598
• Main Authors: Ohara, Satoshi, Kanematsu, Yuichiro, Fujii, Shoma, Kikuchi, Yasunori
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: microorganism; prospective life cycle assessment; scale up; prospective life cycle assessment; microorganism; scale up
• ISBN: 9780443288241; 0443288240
• ISSN: 1570-7946
• DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-443-28824-1.50433-6

In this study, we are tackling the development of a simple dynamic model of bioprocesses that enables life cycle design through computer-aided simulation. The material and energy balances of bioprocesses are significantly affected by scale. The dynamic model considers changes in microbial growth and metabolic production over time and the associated energy balance, such as heating and cooling, as the fermenter is scaled up. The dynamic model developed in this study will theoretically enable efficient bioprocess design by predicting future productivity and environmental impacts and their hotspots and bottlenecks on a commercial scale from early-stage research data and feeding them back to basic laboratory-scale research. As a case study, we simulated the ethanol fermentation process using a prototype of the dynamic model developed in this study. As a result, we confirmed no significant differences in the rates of yeast growth or ethanol production depending on the scale of the fermenter. Still, there were substantial differences in the heat balance. Furthermore, a gate-to-gate LCA limited to the ethanol fermentation process revealed that scaling up from a 5 L jar fermenter to a 50 kL commercial-scale fermenter reduced Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per product by 88 % and visualized the impact of fermenter scale on GHG emissions hot spots.