Modeling, simulation and techinical-economic analysis of packed bed reactor with immobilized fungal cells for fructooligosaccharides production

Abstract

Fructooligosaccharides are prebiotics belonging to the class of fructose oligomers, which are not produced in Brazil. Despite several researches aimed at their production, there is a lack of economic feasibility studies of the processes under development. In this context, this project aims to carry out the modeling, simulation, and technical-economic analysis of a packed bed bioreactor with immobilized fungal cells in continuous operation for the production of fructooligosaccharides. This will be the first step for a future analysis of this whole process, which will include the steps of recovery and purification. The base case to be studied refers to the conversion route of sucrose into fructooligosaccharides by the fucosyltransferase enzyme presented in the fungal mass of Aspergillus oryzae IPT-301 immobilized on a polyurethane monolith. The modeling and simulation of the bioreactor will be carried out with the EMSO software, which allows calculating the mass and energy balances for the bioreaction step. In the technical-economic analysis, the fixed capital and operating cost of this bioreactor will be obtained. This will allow the identification of key points for economic performance by evaluating the effects of temperature, pH, flow, and concentration of sucrose feed, the activity of the catalyst, the lifetime and cost of production (at plant site) of a biocatalyst charge. This study will contribute to future research work on the production of fructooligosaccharides, allowing a closer approximation of advances obtained in academia and industry. (AU)