English

Every autumn semester

Development of new biotechnical processes requires analysis of the microbial metabolism as well as the bioreactor. The aim of this course is to provide the student with understanding and skills to enable them to analyse a biotechnical process in a quantitative fashion. This will provide the basis for the design and scale-up of processes in biotechnology.

The course treats processes in biotechnology in a quantitative fashion on both the cellular and the reactor level. The following topics are covered: Metabolic reactions, stoichiometry, the C-mol concept, degree of reduction, thermodynamics in microbial systems, modelling of metabolic networks, reaction kinetics, design of biotechnical processes, mass transfer, and scale-up of biotechnical processes.

be able to describe the principles behind global metabolic networks analysis, and describe the application of metabolic network analysis in the design of genetically modified production organisms
be able to describe the interaction between physical transport phenomena and the microbial metabolism in a bioreactor
be able to identify critical factors in the scale-up of processes in biotechnology, and qualitatively compare different process options

be able to quantitatively analyse experimental results on the macro-level, e.g. by making carbon- and degree of reduction balances
be able to set up stoichiometric network models for metabolic networks
be able to model microbial kinetics
be able to execute reaction engineering calculations for the design of bioreactors, including size, stirrer effect, mass transfer capacity, and cooling requirements
be able to make a reasonable choice of reactor, substrate, and production organism for a given biotechnical process

be able to assess the usefulness of quantitative models of biological processes within the research topic of the PhD student

Lectures

Seminars

Exercises

Study visit

This is also an advanced course within the engineering programmes of the Faculty of Engineering (B and K)

Written exam

Written assignments

Failed, pass

Accepted to graduate studies within chemistry, chemical engineering, biotechnology or closely related fields

Basic biochemistry (e.g. KBKA/KBK011), Reaction engineering (e.g. KETF25 or KETF40/KTE170) and linear algebra (e.g. FMAA20)

Villadsen, J., Nielsen, J. & Lidén, G.: Bioreaction Engineering Principles. Springer, 2011. ISBN 9781441996879.

Contact: Gunnar Liden, Chemical engineering
gunnar.liden@chemeng.lth.se

KETN30F

 -09-06

Margareta Sandahl