STERILISATION OF AIR IN

FERMENTATION
PROCESS
For sterilization of air for industrial fermentation practices the
sterilizer must satisfy the following major requirements:

(a) Design of the system should be simple.

1. Dry heating by gas fired or electrically heated system

(b) The operation cost of the equipment should be cheap.
2. Adiabatic-compression
(c) It should remove or destroy air-borne contaminants to the extent necessary
3. for
Irradiation
satisfactory fermentation performance.
4. (d)
Scrubbing
In case of repeated steam or chemical vapor sterilization it should be stable.
5. (e)
Electrostatic
precipitation
cyclone
separator
It should condition
the air i.e. in
it should
remove
any oil entrained during
6. compression
Sieving and adjusting the temperature and humidity to a satisfactory range
for fermentation.
7. Filtration through fibrous beds
(f) It should be able to supply sterile air continuously.
8. Filtration through granular beds

Air Sterilization Using Heat:

Bacillus subtilis spores can be sterilized by a passage through an

electrically heated furnace. the exit air temperature of 225C
from the furnace is sufficient to kill all the spores of a strain of B.
subtilis with an exposure time of 0.4 0.6 sees.

Disadvantage:

Very costly method. Also it requires proper cooling of air before

sending to fermenter which imparts extra cost.

Sterilization by Air
Compressor:

In some fermentation processes the air sterilized by adiabatic

compression was used. Stark and Pohler designed a small
reciprocating compressor to compress the air to 100 p.s.i for
supplying sterile air for seed tank fermenter, for pilot plant
studies of the aerobic 2,3 butylene glycol process, for aerobic
culture of A. oryzae and for some other purposes.

They demanded reciprocating compressors operated at pressure

up to 100 psi. might be preferable for smaller installations but at
low pressure turbo-compressors with suitable filters would be
more economical for large capacities.

Disadvantage:

Very costly method to be applied to large industrial fermentation.

Air Sterilization by Granular

Filters:

Amongst all the granular materials granular carbon has been

found to be the best granular filter material for air sterilization.
Adsorptive power of charcoal may be the cause of its selection to
filtering medium.

Disadvantages:

1. Inlet air temperature cannot be raised above 120F otherwise

carbon may ignite.

2. Although carbon is screened to a coarse mesh size a certain

amount of fine carbon dust still adheres to the coarse material.
So if steam sterilization under pressure is started spontaneous
ignition frequently occurs since the unit behaves like a water gas
plant.

Air Sterilization by Fibrous

Filters

At present most commercial air sterilization units are deep beds of glass
wool or similar fibrous materials.

The reasons for choosing the fibrous materials are the following:

(a) Their design and operation is extremely simple.

(b) If they are periodically checked and replaced then their reliability is
extremely good.

(c) Lower bed diameter and height is required compared to carbon filters
for the same sterilization capacity operating at comparable pressure drops.

(d) Glass wool does not pose any hazard.

(e) Collection efficiency is high.

(f) Low pressure drop of air flow through the fibrous filter bed.