Separation of bacterial starter cultures: Influence of the exopolysaccharide production on efficiency and scalability of the centrifugation step

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are playing a major role for the production of various bakery and dairy products. Those starter cultures are made in a fermentation process under appropriate conditions like a defined temperature, composition of the nutrient solution and pH value. Fermentation is usually followed by a separation step by means of centrifugation. The subsequent treatment covers the addition of additive agents and freeze-drying to ensure long term stability.

A multitude of different strains are commercially used which differ in their properties and their area of application. This results in the need of a flexible and custom made production process of the cultures. With regards to the separation step there is a huge potential of optimization as the main influencing factors are rarely investigated by today. For newly developed cultures, industry has a high demand for scalability models to design the production-scale process from laboratory experiments. Existing models are not satisfying because they are based on inorganic particulates. In contrast to that biological systems represent a more challenging task.

Summary report of the project

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