Welcome to the last section of the current module, in which we will look at opportunities that microorganisms from nature offer us to produce interesting compounds, and show you the conditions to develop feasible processes.

We will use concepts called ‘process reaction’ and ‘stoichiometry’, which mean an overview of compounds entering and leaving the reaction over the entire fermentation process and the relative quantities of those compounds, respectively. These compounds and relative amounts are often expressed in terms of a chemical equation, with biomass as one of the compounds.

A third concept that we use is balancing. With this method, we can express the change in the amount of compounds present as a function of time, influenced by the conversion of your feedstock to the desired, and often also undesired, products. We will explore limitations in this conversion by microorganisms when it’s applied to large-scale processes.

In short, the microbe converts the renewable feedstock into the product that you want to have. However, the microbe is present in a large bioreactor and there the environment of the organism is very important. The environment is highly determined by the conditions that you set for the microorganism. We’ll try to explain to you what is important in this kind of installations.

Enjoy!