Microbial fermentation is conventionally performed in stainless steel vessels. However, such equipment requires extensive cleaning and qualification between runs. In addition, reusable equipment includes an inherent cross‑contamination risk.
To overcome many of the challenges associated with stainless steel vessels, single-use fermentors offer an increasingly viable alternative. With single-use fermentors, less time is spent on equipment preparation and qualification prior to start-up as well as routine maintenance and requalification of the equipment. In addition, all process components that have been in contact with the process material can be discarded after use, eliminating the cross-contamination risk between fermentation runs.
In this application note, the authors describe how medium preparation and liquid management can be performed for an E. coli fermentation process in single-use workflows.