Projeto de um biorreator STR para fungo filamentoso

Abstract

Currently fungal mycelium has been widely used in different areas such as food, architecture, and fashion, and can be produced through solid state and submerged fermentations, and in submerged fermentations, the mycelium can be produced in stirred tank bioreactors, however the morphological structures of fungi can be affected depending on the agitation used. Bioreactors are equipment widely used in the bioprocess industries to promote the best cultivation conditions for the microorganism and have a great influence on the performance of the fermentation process. In aerobic fermentations, as is the case with some fungi, the oxygen transfer coefficient (kLa) ends up becoming one of the most important criteria, but it cannot be the only criterion used in the scales. The objective of this work was to scale a bioreactor based on the characteristics of a benchtop bioreactor to obtain the best conditions for the microorganism. In this work, studies were carried out on the mixing time through the time that the bioreactor takes to stabilize the pH after adding a base, on the transfer and consumption of oxygen by the dynamic method, where different impellers promote different results and the scaling of the 2.5 L benchtop bioreactor to a 50 L bioreactor using mass transfer criteria. The Rushton-Elephant Ear joint mixing time showed a reduction of 69.60% under agitation at 60 rpm and 18.49% for 90 rpm in relation to the use of a single Elephant Ear impeller, and for oxygen transfer the elephant ear impeller performed better than the Rushton-elephant ear impeller. And the best criterion for sizing was the constancy of the speed at the impeller tip (Vtip), due to the improvement in kLa, which is very important for the studied microorganism.