Chapter 8 - Distillation in Bioprocessing

Abstract

To produce biological products within the pharmaceutical and food industries, as well as to establish more sustainable production within the chemical and specialty chemical industries, biotechnological processes play an important role. Biotechnology is an interdisciplinary research field combining biology (microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, bioinformatics), chemistry (biochemistry, classical chemistry) and engineering (process engineering, apparatus engineering). Biotechnology is dealing with the development of biocatalysis (enzymes to carry out a reaction that perform inside or outside of a cell) and biocatalytic reaction routes as well as the design of bioproducts. It is accompanied by research focusing on the development of biobased processes using biobased raw materials based on nonbiocatalytic processing steps. Even though the main focus of both is often within the reaction, downstream processing within biotechnological processes plays a crucial role for the development of efficient and economic processes. However, the challenges and bottlenecks for separation/purification within biotechnological processes vary dramatically depending on the product. Besides biopharmaceuticals/biomedicals (red biotechnology), plants (green biotechnology) and petrochemical products are replaced by biochemicals through the development of processes of industrial biotechnology (white biotechnology) or biobased processing. In this chapter, the contribution of classic distillation, hybrid separations as well as new distillation-based technologies such as reactive distillation are highlighted in the different application fields within bioprocesses. Additionally, the outlook for new distillation technologies, such as Higee distillation, are discussed, along with challenges regarding design/synthesis tools necessary for the development of economic and sustainable bioprocesses that will enable reliable and quick implementation into large-scale production.