Physiology of immobilized saccharomyces spp. for brewing fermentation

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing need for reducing unit operation costs used in the industrial fermentation for beer production. Special emphasis in given on how these strategies would impact brewing yeast physiology. In this context, cell immobilization is an interesting strategy, since it might reduce the steps required for cell biomass separation from the fermented broth in the cell recycling process. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to study possible physiological perturbations in immobilized yeast cells, in the context of beer production. Therefore, this project main goal is to improve the brewing fermentation process, by using immobilized yeast cells in a cellulose-based support. This will be performed by batch cultivations to evaluate macroscopic physiological parameters (such as conversion yield coefficients and consumption and production rates) of immobilized yeasts, as compared to free-yeast cells. Brewing fermentation performed with immobilized cells is expected to simplify the cell recycling process as compared to free-yeast cells. (AU)