- B Choudhury: Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai 600 036, India.
Traditional lactic acid fermentation suffers from low productivity and low product purity. Cell-recycle fermentation has become one of the methods to obtain high cell density, which results in higher productivity. lactic acid fermentation was investigated in a cell-recycle membrane bioreactor at higher substrate concentrations of 100 and 120 g/dm3. A maximum cell density of 145 g/dm3 and a maximum productivity of 34 g/(dm3.h) were achieved in cell-recycle fermentation. In spite of complete consumption of substrate, there was a continuous increase in cell density in cell-recycle fermentation. Control of cell density in cell-recycle fermentation was attempted by cell bleeding and reduction in yeast extract concentration.