This chapter discusses fermentation design. Industrial scale fermentation technology tends to be a “proprietary science.” The industries with submerged liquid fermentation processes as a “synthetic” step for producing a commercial product generally have developed their own technology and have not shared developments with their competitors, academe, or the public. If major fermentation industries decided to openly discuss the criteria of their procedures and processes for their fermentation departments, they would not agree on most systems and equipment, from culture storage methods to valves, from lab culture propagation to fermenter design, from scale-up to sterile filters, or from tank inoculation methods to continuous sterilizers. The temperature for culture storage varies from -196° C to +2° C and above. The containers generally are glass, but vary from tubing to test tubes, flasks, roux bottles, and serum bottles. The space requirements and the equipment necessary for designing a culture maintenance lab vary widely, from simple laminar flow hoods to air locked sterile rooms, that only each company can specify the details. The layout of labs, fermenter buildings, the media preparation area and warehousing must be able to be expanded.
