Continuous Bio-Mass production

Microbial biomass which is produced from human or animal consumption is referred to as single cell protein. Although yeast was produced as food on a large scale in Germany during the World War I, the concept of utilizing microbial biomass as food was not thoroughly investigated until the 1960s. Since then a large number of industrial companies have explored the potential and started producing the single cell proteins from a wide range of carbon sources. Almost without exception, these investigations have been based on the use of continuous culture as the growth technology. The continuous growth technology is the ideal method for the production of microbial biomass. The superior productivity of the technology compared with that of batch culture may be exploited fully and the problem of strain degeneration is not as significant as in the production of microbial metabolites. The selective pressure in the chemostat would tend to work in advantage of the industrialist producing single cell proteins. The development of “single cell proteins” production process generated considerable research into a large-scale chemostat design and the behavior of the production organism in these very large vessels.