CHAPTER SEVEN
DOWNSTREAM PROCESSING
Biochemical products production
❑ Biochemical production consists of an upstream, reactor and
downstream sections
Raw material Recycle Purification and Produces
Sterilization Formulation
Raw material
preparation
Bioreactor
Recovery Side
Produces
Biocatalyst micro
organism
preparation
Waste Treatment
Catalyst Recycle Effluent
INTRODUCTION
Upstream: upstream section in a biochemical process consists of facilities for the
preparation of micro-organism and media, sterilization of raw materials and inoculation
of the micro-organism.
Bioreactor/fermentor: reactor section is the fermentor or a reactor/bioreactor and the
associated machinery and accessories.
Downstream process: downstream is where the product is recovered, purified,
formulated and stabilized. Recovery of side product is also carried out in the
downstream section.
In addition waste treatment facilities can be considered under this unit.
Bioprocess-overview
• Downstream processing has been there over a very long period of time, especially in
the area of chemical engineering where chemical engineers used to practice recovery of
products using filtration, distillation, separations involving extractions and so on.
• Examples of downstream processes
✓ Natural gas process
✓ Crude oil processing
✓ Bioprocessing
• In the area of bio process the complications are slightly much more since as we are
handling enzymes or proteins or bio molecules and need to consider the stability of
these bio molecules.
Bioprocess-overview
• Downstream stream refers to recovery and purification of:
✓ Biosynthetic products
✓ Pharmaceutical
✓ Food
✓ Chemicals (bulk/speciality)
✓ Health/ neutralceuticals
from natural sources such as animal or plant tissue fermentation broth.
Downstream processing refers to recovery and purification of biosynthetic products,
products coming out of a biological operation
Bioprocess-overview
• One of the big challenges in bioprocess recovering and purification of the products in a
very economical way, recover it as much as possible and with out changing the desired
properties of the biological products.
• That means not lose anything in the waste, but try to recover as much as possible in to
your final purification. That is the main challenge of a downstream processing actually.
Intracellular Extracellular
Bioprocess-overview
Typical example of bioprocess:alcohol manufacturing process
Rectifying Column
Condenser
Distillation Still
Yeast Condenser
Fermenter
Neutral
Whiskey Sprits
Raw
Beer Well
material
Water
Dried
Filter Spray Dryer Grain
Dried
Spray Dryer Soluble
Downstream Processing-Overview
• Desired product is either inside the cells that
Bioreactor
means microorganism or it is in the medium
or in the broth
Intracellular Intracellular
• Even though, the product is in the medium or Product Product
broth, the concentration is very low so the
idea is to recover, concentrate, purify to the
Cell Disruption
required specification.
• For drug, it has to be extremely pure (zero Debris separation
impurity levels).
Concentration
• For bulk products impurity may be 5 or 10 %.
Purification
• So, depending upon the type of application,
the purity levels are decided upon actually. Formulation
Final
Product
CHAPTER SEVEN
DOWNSTREAM PROCESSING
CHAPTER EIGHT
NANOTECHNOLOGY &GENETIC ENGINEERING