Chemical Engineering March 2014 - 5

Winner of Eight Jesse H. Neal
Awards for Editorial Excellence
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More than beer is brewing
T
his year, the recipient of the Othmer Gold Medal is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw,
chairman and managing director of Biocon Ltd.
(Bangalore, India; www.biocon.com). The award, which will be
presented at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF; Philadelphia,
Pa.; www.chemheritage.org) in May, honors outstanding individuals
who have made multifaceted contributions to our chemical and scientific
heritage.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a pioneer in India's biotechnology industry.
She was that country's first female brewmaster, and she went on
to create a globally recognized bio-pharma enterprise. As Carsten Reinhardt,
president and CEO of CHF said, " Then she used her knowledge
of fermentation to become one of the greatest entrepreneurs in
the history of her nation. " One of Biocon's key innovations is the development
of Pichia-based (a yeast) recombinant human insulin. The
human insulin manufacturing process begins with fermentation.
Fermentation is playing an increasingly important role in the chemical
process industries (CPI), and not just for the more traditional
products made by that route, such as for the food-and-beverage and
pharmaceutical sectors. The CPI are experiencing significant growth
in bio-based chemicals (see for example, Bio-Based Chemicals Gain
Market Acceptance, Chem. Eng., August 2013, pp. 14-17; and The BioBased
Economy, Chem. Eng., August 2011, pp. 14-16), and a growing
number of new processes are based on fermentation.
In this issue for example, we report on construction that is underway
to build a pilot plant for what is believed to be the first fermentation
process capable of directly producing isobutene (p. 12). Global
Bioenergies (Evry, France; www.global-bioenergies.com) plans to start
500-L pilot operations later this year, and to scale up the fermenter
next year. In our January issue, we reported on a new process for
making lactic acid from palm waste (Chem. Eng., January 2014, pp.
9-11) in a process that uses fermentation.
While new bio-based innovations seemingly continue to flourish,
the use of fermentation in novel biological pathways to make highvalue
chemicals has already matured to production scale. A noteworthy
example is the bio-based 1,4-butanediol (BDO) process developed
by Genomatica Inc. (San Diego, Calif.; www.genomatica.com)
- the winner of our most recent Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering
Achievement Award. Genomatica produced BDO at commercial
scale using renewable feedstocks for the first time, via large-scale
fermentation and recovery (for more on this winning achievement,
see 42nd Kirkpatrick Award Announced, Chem. Eng. November
2013, pp. 14-19). And, in November 2013, BASF SE (Ludwigshafen,
Germany; www.basf.com) reported that it produced its first commercial
quantities of BDO using Genomatica's fermentation technology.
As fermentation broadens its reach as a route to commercial-scale
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chemical production, it becomes more important to learn about fermentation
scaleup and some of the unique challenges
it brings. This month's feature report on
Mass Transfer in Fermentation Scaleup (pp. 44-47)
focuses on the mass transfer aspect of the process,
which is often a limiting factor in aerobic fermentation.
It is a complementary article to Heat Transfer
for Huge Scale Fermentation (Chem. Eng., November
2013, pp.44-46) that examines the heat transfer
challenges in scaling up fermentation processes. ■
Dorothy Lozowski, Editor in Chief
ChemiCal engineering www.Che.Com marCh 2014 5
http://www.biocon.com http://www.chemheritage.org http://www.global-bioenergies.com http://www.genomatica.com http://www.basf.com http://www.accessintel.com http://www.Che.Com
Chemical Engineering March 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering March 2014
