BIOPROCESS ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

Isolation, screening and maintenance of industrially important microbes; microbial growth and death kinetics (an example from each group, particularly with reference to industrially useful microorganisms); strain improvement for increased yield and other desirable characteristics. Elemental balance equations; metabolic coupling – ATP and NAD+; yield coefficients; unstructured models of microbial growth; structured models of microbial growth.

Batch and continuous fermenters; modifying batch and continuous reactors: chemostat with recycle, multistage chemostat systems, fed-batch operations; fermentation economics; upstream processing: media formulation and optimization; sterilization; aeration, agitation and heat transfer in bioprocess; scale up and scale down; measurement and control of bioprocess parameters.

Isolation of micro-organisms of potential industrial interest; strain improvement; market analysis; equipment and plant costs; media; sterilization, heating and cooling; aeration and agitation; bath-process cycle times and continuous cultures; recovery costs; water usage and recycling; effluent treatment and disposal. Separation of insoluble products - filtration, centrifugation, sedimentation, flocculation; Cell disruption; separation of soluble products: liquid-liquid extraction, precipitation, chromatographic techniques, reverse osmosis, ultra and micro filtration, electrophoresis; final purification: drying; crystallization; storage and packaging

Mechanism of enzyme function and reactions in process techniques; enzymatic bioconversions e.g. starch and sugar conversion processes; high-fructose corn syrup; interesterified fat; hydrolyzed protein etc. and their downstream processing; baking by amylases, deoxygenation and desugaring by glucose oxidase, beer mashing and chill proofing; cheese making by proteases and various other enzyme catalytic actions in food processing

Fermented foods and beverages; food ingredients and additives prepared by fermentation and their purification; fermentation as a method of preparing and preserving foods; microbes and their use in pickling, producing colors and flavors, alcoholic beverages and other products; process wastes-whey, molasses, starch substrates and other food wastes for bioconversion to useful products; bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria – production and applications in food preservation; biofuels and biorefinery