In situ product recovery as a strategy for bioprocess integration and depletion of inhibitory products

Abstract

AbstractMicrobial growth inhibition by end‐products is an undesirable behavior that causes low yields and reduces the overall productivity and feasibility of fermentative bioprocesses. Classic downstream processing techniques have been explored widely to attenuate this behavior by integrating them with the upstream operations. These in situ extraction techniques appear as an attractive alternative to increase titers and consequently total recovery and/or purification. This also reduces the number of downstream operations and thus the time and final cost of the bioprocess. In the present work, process integration at the earliest stage of a bioprocess – the bioreactor – is presented as an attractive strategy to facilitate primary recovery and in some cases to overcome end‐product microbial inhibition. A careful revision of selected strategies, from classical to hybrid techniques for in situ product recovery, is presented along with pros and cons, to give the reader a general overview of different experimental strategies and selection criteria that can be generally applied to different bioproducts/bioprocesses. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).