4.5 Product Formation Kinetics
Product formation kinetics fall into one of the following three types.
Figure 4-5a Growth Associated Product Formation
Figure 4-5b Non-Growth Associated Product
Formation
Figure 4-5c Mixed Mode Product Formation
Typical time-profiles of these three cases are illustrated above. In Type I shown in Fig 4-5a, product is formed simultaneously with growth of cells. That is product concentration increases with cell concentration. The metabolic quotient for P can be expressed as a function of µ,
It is clear from the above, the proportionality constant, a is the yield coefficient, YP/X. Anaerobic fermentation of sugars by Saccharomyces cerevisae is an example of Type I. Illustrated below are actual data for this bioprocess.
Figure 4-5 Ethanol Fermentation data for yeast illustrates Type I product formation kinetics. Note that formation of alcohol is proportional to cell concentration.
In Type II, product formation is unrelated to growth rate, but is a function of cell concentration. This is expressed as
Antibody formation by hybridoma, and some antibiotic fermentation exhibit this type of behavior.
In the third category, product formation is a combination of growth rate and cell concentration. That is,
Many biochemical processes fall into this category. Note that if b is zero and a is YP/X, this case reduces to Type I. If a = 0, it reduces to non-growth associated case. Therefore let us consider this more general case for further analysis.
In a batch reactor, product accumulation can be obtained by carrying out mass balance on the product.
Rate of Product Formation = Accumulation of Product
For constant V,
If we consider exponential phase only, X = X0 Exp(µmt). That is, substituting in the above gives
Integrating from t = 0, P = P0 we get
The above expression can be used to calculate the amount of product concentration at the end of a growth cycle.
Example 4-1
McCallion reported growth of Thermoanaerobacter ethanolicus under controlled pH of 7.0. Using appropriate graphs calculate YX/G and YLA/G, where G and LA refer to glucose and lactate. Is lactic acid formation growth associated ? Can you estimate an approximate value for qglucose?
Time [h]
Glucose [g/L]
Lactate (LA) [g/L]
Cell (X) [g/L]
0
19.50
0.45
0.01
13
16.88
3.88
0.41
14
14.85
4.94
0.54
16
13.11
6.98
0.92
18
10.40
8.98
0.99
19
8.91
10.30
1.05
20
7.75
10.83
1.15
22
5.18
12.57
1.30
24
3.64
14.58
1.35
37
0.25
16.03
0.69
Solution
First plot cell concentration versus time. The slope in the exponential growth phase is approximately 0.24 h-1. Notice that the culture growth slows down shortly after 15 h. One could also analyze the information numerically. Such an approach unfortunately will lack a good overview of the phases of growth.
Now plot LA vs X and S vs X.
Plot above shows that the exponential behavior deviates at t = 16 h. A straight line drawn during the exponential phase gives growth rate.
Except for one point, all others lie nearly on a straight line. The data at 0.7 g/L of cell corresponds to the declining phase of growth, which may be ignored for current analysis. The line has a negative slope because glucose decreases as cell concentration increases.
Yields from the above graphs: