Up Scaling – The
trouble begins
This is where problems really started to come to a head. With
Aidan doing his Final Year Project on these Kefir grains he is the realistic
expert in this area, and we are only researching this to a very basic level,
his voice would travel furthest on decisions to be made. But on the other hand I
feel I have the most relevant experience in working fermenting on a large scale
and also working with volumes on a large scale. In articles that I have found
the process has taken place in stainless steel bioreactors which can be used on
a large scale, are significantly cheaper and very easy to clean, but Aidan has
research and many more papers which show that only glass was used. This very
quickly turned to a who’s right and a who’s wrong session. I was speaking from first-hand
experience of using very small volumes to make up a big volume from the brewery
and knew that is not a feasible way of making a product, while he was convinced
that quality of the product would be effected if stainless steel was used. We decided
to use a pros and cons list which would plainly lay out our thoughts and choose
from that.
In the end we decided to use both. The fermentation would
take place in large glass jars, while the rest of the process would take place
in a stainless steel bioreactor, which could be equipped with all the ancillaries
needed to bring the product to a stage where it was ready for bottling. The kefir
grains would be filtered from the liquid before entering the bioreactor so that
there would be no interaction with the stainless steel. A happy compromise was reached.
We began work on a process that would suit this scale up and
the parameters in place. I was happy to take a lead on this section, knowing I had
worked in this area before. We designed a bioreactor that would suit our needs
and could be supplied by all the ancillaries needed to produce the best product
in the most efficient way. With all this in mind I decided to draw on CADworks
the design that we all felt would suit us the best. Our final choice was a 500L
tank that could be cooled, with accurate temperature control, and fitted with a
impeller for consistent mixing.
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