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New cultivation system for anaerobic micro-organisms facilitates biofuel development

DASGIP AG, a leading manufacturer of parallel bioreactor systems, has optimized its technology for the process development of anaerobic micro-organisms via their parallel design. Through this type of parallel control and monitoring, a more efficient development of biofuels like bioethanol is facilitated. DASGIP will present these fermentation control systems during the Biotechnica 2007 in Hanover.

Bioethanol is produced by a variety of micro-organisms under anaerobic conditions, i.e. in the absence of oxygen. For biotechnical methods of fuel production to be competitive with conventional procedures, it is necessary to use such variants of micro-organisms whose enzymes can produce biofuels at low temperatures, with a high pH tolerance, and with minimal energy consumption. With this goal in mind, DASGIP has optimized its parallel bioreactor systems: The user can ferment and compare several different micro-organisms under the same conditions (screening), or the same micro-organism can be compared under different conditions (optimization). The system allows continuous monitoring of important variables such as pH value and redox potential, gassing parameters and temperature. DASGIP’s PH4RD4 module can measure redox potential and pH simultaneously and individually in four reactors. In addition, the gassing module MF4 supplies the bioreactor with up to four input gasses. Each gas has its own independent lead, which can be selected as necessary. The user can even combine gasses that react with each other in the same gassing system and thus optimize the conditions of testing.

Within the industrial biotechnology, a big challenge for science and industry has recently emerged: How to identify new anaerobic micro-organisms that are able to produce biofuels from organic substrates efficiently and economically. Finally the European Commission has decided to decrease the yearly CO2 emission. This breaks an important operational area to DASGIP’s parallel bioreactor systems, in a market with a high growth potential.