Fermentation and process equipment

This Food Expo will also focus on the new trends and technologies in the fermentation technique.
Fermentation is used in a wide range of food and beverage applications, and the technology for enhancing
this process is continually evolving. Industrial fermentation is the intentional use of fermentation by
microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi to make products useful to humans. Fermented products have
applications as food as well as in general industry. Some commodity chemicals, such as acetic acid, citric
acid, and ethanol are made by fermentation. The rate of fermentation depends on the concentration of
microorganisms, cells, cellular components, and enzymes as well as temperature, pH and for aerobic
fermentation oxygen. Product recovery frequently involves the concentration of the dilute solution. Nearly
all commercially produced enzymes, such as lipase, invertase and rennet, are made by fermentation with
genetically modified microbes. Hopefully, the Fermented Food Symposium will be helpful in explaining
these facts.

Fermentation in food is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids
using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination under anaerobic conditions. Fermentation usually implies that the
action of microorganisms is desirable. The science of fermentation is also known as zymology or zymurgy.
Fermentation is sometimes used to specifically refer to the chemical conversion of sugars into ethanol, a
process which is used to produce alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer, and cider. It also employed in
the leavening of bread, in preservation techniques to produce lactic acid in sour foods such as sauerkraut,
dry sausages, kimchi, and yogurt; and in pickling of foods with vinegar.

• New development in beverages analysis

• Fermentation equipment & advanced techniques
• Application of enzymes in bioprocess
• Bioreactors and cell culture systems
• Optimizing cell culture process
• Future prospects for cell culture systems

Micro Organism
Unicellular organism that are cultured through fermentation to produce useful products.
• Yeast - .004 to .010 mm
Means of reproduction: Budding

 Bacteria - .007mm
Long dimensions (oblong)
Means of reproduction: Binary Fission
 Lactic Acid (World War 1, 1880)
Chaim Weizmann
Corn to Acetone and n-Butanol.
 Penicillin (World War 2)
Antibiotic

Industrial Alcohol
Industrial alcohol was an outgrowth of alcoholic beverages, but now it has become important by virtue of
its economically useful properties as a solvent and for synthesis of other chemicals. The completely
denatured formulas are admixtures of substances which are difficult to separate from the alcohol and which
smell and taste bad, all this being designed to render the alcohol nonpotable. Such completely denatured
alcohol is sold widely without bond. Factories find it an essential raw material. A typical completely
denatured alcohol formula follows:
MAKING OF INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL. The flowchart in Fig. 4.1 shows the various
operations involved in changing corn to alcohol. The corn is degeminated, dehulled, and
milled either wet or dry. The milled corn is conveyed to the cooker. Cooking is necessary
to gelatinize the ground grain so that the barley malt amylases can convert the starch to
fermentable sugars. The cookers may be batch or continuous and are operated under
pressure. In the continuous process the grain is precooked for 1 to 5 min with water and
stillage (the dealcoholized, fermented beer that is discharged from the bottom of the beer
still). The mash is continuously fed to a steam heater that instantaneously raises the
temperature to 175°C. The mash is passed through a series of pipes and discharged
through a relief valve into a flash chamber. Time in the cooker is about 1.5 min and the
pressure is maintained at 60 to 100kPa gauge. The temperature of the mash drops to
about 60°C in the flash chamber. The gelatinized (cooked) grain mash is mixed with
malted barley and water. The mix is pumped through a pipeline (converter) for 2 min at
60°C and then is sent to the fermenters through pipe coolers. The starch is hydrolyzed to
about 70% maltose and 30% dextrins in the short time in the converter. Stillage (20 to
25% of the final mash volume) from the beer still is added to the converted grain mash
prior to fermentation to lower the pH, furnish nutrients for the yeast, and to add buffering
action. Meanwhile a charge of the selected yeast (about 5 percent of the total volume)
has been growing in the yeast tub on a corn-barley malt mash which has been previously
sterilized under pressure and cooled. Bacteriologists have cultivated a strain of yeast that
thrives under acid conditions whereas wild yeasts and bacteria do not. The mash is
pumped into the fermenter and the yeast added as soon as 10 percent of the malt has
been pumped. The initial pH is adjusted to 4.8 to 5.0 with sulfuric acid and/or stillage: As
the reaction indicates, fermentation is exothermic, so cooling may be necessary to ensure
that the maximum temperature does not exceed 32°C. The time of the fermentation cycle
may vary from 40 to 72h. The liquors in the fermenters, after the action is finished, are
called beer. The alcohol is separated by distillation. The beer, containing from 6,5 to 11
% alcohol by volume, is pumped to the upper sections of the beer still, after passing
several heat exchangers. As the beer passes down the column, it gradually loses its
lighter boiling constituents. The liquid discharged from the bottom of the still through a
heat exchanger is known as stillage. It carries proteins, residual sugars, and in some
instances, vitamin products so it is frequently evaporated and used as a constituent of
animal feed. The overhead containing alcohol, water, and aldehydes passes through a
heat exchanger to the partial condenser, or dephlegmator, which condenses sufficient of
the vapors to afford a reflux and also to strengthen the vapors that pass through to the
condenser, where about 50% alcohol, containing volatiles, or aldehydes, is condensed.
This condensate, frequently known as the high wines, is conducted into the aldehyde. Or
heads, column, from which the low-boiling impurities are separated as an overhead. The
effluent liquor from part way down the aldehyde column Cows into the rectifying column.
In this third column the alcohol is brought to strength and finally purified in the following
manner: The overhead passing through a dephlegmator is partly condensed to keep the
stronger alcohol in this column and to provide reflux for the upper plates. The more volatile
products, which may still contain a trace of aldehydes and of course alcohol, are totally
condense and carried back to the upper part of the aldehyde still. Near the top of the
column 95 to 95.6% alcohol is taken off through a condenser for storage and sale. Farther
down the column, the higher boiling fuel oils are run off through a cooler and separator to
a special still, where they are rectified from any alcohol they may carry before being sold
as an impure amyl alcohol for solvent purposes. The bottom of this rectifying column
discharges water. Alcohol-water mixtures are rectified to increase the strength of the
alcohol component by virtue of the composition of the vapors being stronger in the more
volatile constituent than the liquid from which these vapors arise.

BEERS, WINES, AND LIQUORS

The making of fermented beverages was discovered by primitive humans and has been practiced
as an art for thousands of years. Within the past century and a half, it has evolved into highly developed
science. A good brewer has to be an engineer, a chemist, and a bacteriologist. In common with other food
industries, the factors taste, odor, and individual preference exist to force the manufacturer to exert the
greatest skill and experience in producing palatable beverages of great variety. In the last analysis, the
criterion of quality, with all the refinements of modern science, still lies in the human sensory organs of
taste, smell, and sight. Alcoholic beverages are divided into three groups: malt liquors, fermented wines,
and distilled liquors. Beer and ale require malted (germinated) grain to make the carbohydrates
fermentable, wines are produced by the action of yeast on the sugar of fruit, and distilled liquors are
fermented liquors which are then distilled to increase the alcoholic content.

Raw Materials

Grains and fruits supplying carbohydrates are the basic raw materials. The variety of grains and fruits
employed is wide, changing from country to country, or from beverage to beverage.

Russia: Potatoes -> Vodka (Mexico: sap of maguey -> Pulque)

World’s chief raw mat.: cereals, corn, barley and rice, grapes

BEER
Beer and allied products are beverages of low alcoholic content (2-7%) made by brewing various
cereals with hops. Cereals employed are barley, malted to develop the necessary enzymes and the desired
flavor, as well as malt adjuncts such as flaked rice, oats and corn. Brewing sugars and syrups and yeast
complete the raw materials. For beer the most important cereal is barley which is converted into malt by
partial germination.

The flowchart for beer manufacture in Fig. 4.5 may be divided into three groups of
procedures: (1) brewing of the mash through to the cooled hopped wort, (2) Fermentation,
and (3) storage, finishing, and packaging for market. Mashing is the extraction of the
valuable constituents of malt, malt adjuncts, and sugars by macerating the ground
materials with 190to 230 L of water per 100 kg of materials listed in Fig. 4.5 and treating
with water to prevent too high a pH, which would tend to make a dark beer. In the pressure
cooker, the insoluble starch is converted into liquefied starch, and the soluble malt starch
into dextrin and malt sugars. The resulting boiling cooker mash, mixed with the rest of the
malt in the mash tub, which raises the temperature to 75°C, is used to prepare the
brewers' wort. This is carried out in the mash tub. After all the required ingredients have
been dissolved from the brewing materials, the entire mash is run from the mash tub to
filter presses or the lauter or straining tub, where the wort is separated from the insoluble
spent grains through a slotted false bottom and run into the copper wort cooker. For
complete recovery of all substances in solution, a spray of decarbonated water at 74°C
is rained through the grains. This is called sparging.
The wort is cooked for approximately 1 to 1.5 h, during part of which it is in contact with
hops. The purpose of boiling is to concentrate the wort to the desired strength, to sterilize
it (15 min) and destroy all the enzymes, to coagulate certain proteins by heat (82°C), to
modify its malty odor, and to extract the hop resins tannin and aroma from the hops, which
are added during the cooking process. At the end of the time the spent hops are separated
from the boiling wort very quickly in a whirlpool separator. Since the spent hops retain
770 L of wort per 100 kg of hops, they should also be sparged. The wort is then ready to
be cooled. The cooling step is not only to reduce the temperature but also to allow the
wort to absorb enough air to facilitate the start of fermentation. The wort is then cooled in
a plate heat exchanger to 48°C and then aerated. Slight concentration due to evaporation,
occurs. This operation is performed under controlled conditions to prevent contamination
by wild yeasts Frequently, sterilized air is used. The cooled wort is mixed with selected
yeasts in the line leading to the starting tubs between 285 to 380 g of yeast being used
per 100 L of beer. The initial fermentation temperature is 4 to 6°C but, as the fermentation
proceeds, the temperature rises to 14°C. This is easily explained by the fact that the
conversion of the sugar to carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol by the enzymes of the yeast
generate 650 kJ per kilogram of maltose converted. The temperature is partly controlled
by coolers inserted in the fermenters. The mixture is skimmed to remove the foreign
substances that the evolved carbon dioxide brings to the top. e carbon dioxide evolved is
collected by using closed fermenters and is stored under 17,000kpa of pressure for
subsequent use in carbonating the beer.
The yeast gradually settles to the bottom of the fermenting tanks in about 7 to 10
days. The liquid is very opalescent in appearance, under a cover of foam. As the beer
leaves the fermenters, it contains in suspension hop resins, insoluble nitrogenous
substances, and a fair amount of yeast. It is then sent to the lagering (aging) tanks where,
usually, a second fermentation occurs. The temperature is kept high enough to initiate
the second fermentation then is cooled to 0 to 2°C to lager the beer. Lagering consists of
storing at 0 to 2°C for 2to 4 months. During this time the taste and aroma are improved,
and tannins, proteins, and hop resins are removed by settling Highly hopped beers
require more lagering time than containing less hops. Near the end of the period the beer
is saturated with CO; at 50) kPa

Distilled Spirits
Various fermented products, upon distillation and aging yields distilled spirits. Brandy is distilled
from wine. Making a beer from a grain mixture containing at least 51% corn and distilling and aging it yields
bourbon. Whiskey must start with 51% rye in the grain to be mashed and fermented.

Fermenters
• is an enclosed and sterilized vessel that maintains optimal conditions for the growth of a
microorganism. The microorganism undergoes fermentation to produce large quantities of a
desired metabolite for commercial use.
• Constructed from materials that can withstand repeated steam sterilization and cleaning cycles.
• Glass is used to construct fermenters of capacity up to about 30 liters. The advantages of glass
are that it is smooth, nontoxic, corrosion-proof, and transparent for easy inspection of the vessel
contents. Because entry ports are required for medium, inoculum, air, and instruments such as pH
and temperature sensors, glass fermenters are usually equipped with stainless steel headplates
containing many screw fittings.
• Made of corrosion-resistant stainless steel, although mild steel with stainless steel cladding has
also been used.
• Cheaper grades of stainless steel may be used for the jacket and other surfaces isolated from the
broth.
• Copper and copper-containing materials must be avoided in all parts of the fermenter contacting
the culture because of its toxic effect on cells.
• Interior steel surfaces are polished to a bright “mirror” finish to facilitate cleaning and sterilization of
the reactor.
 • Welds on the interior of the vessel are ground flush before polishing. Electropolishing is preferred
over mechanical polishing, as mechanical polishing leaves tiny ridges and grooves in the metal to
accumulate dirt and microorganisms.

Safety and Health (Health & Safety Practices for wineries: Dept. of Environmental and Occupational
Health Sciences University of Washington)

• Release of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into Work Areas

Fermentation produces carbon dioxide gas – about 40 times the volume of grape juice. Excessive carbon
dioxide in the air can cause headache, sweating, rapid breathing, increased heartbeat, shortness of breath,
and dizziness.
 Provide adequate mechanical exhaust ventilation and fresh air supply during times of fermentation
for tank rooms, barrel rooms, cellars, and other areas that may accumulate carbon dioxide.
 Test the levels of carbon dioxide in work areas and for workers performing tasks with potential
exposure and compare with the occupational exposure limits.
• Fall from heights
Adding ingredients to wine tanks during fermentation, inspecting wine for proper fermentation, or
performing pump overs or cap punching requires employees to access the top of wine tanks and bins which
can create a fall hazard and risk of serious injury.
 Access the top of wine tanks or Macro Bins by use of fixed work platforms, rolling staircases, or
mobile platforms with guardrails, or if the task allows safe use, the correct type ladder. Ladders
must be in good repair and secured when used. Ensure employees are trained on proper set up
and use of ladders and mobile steps or platforms.
 Make sure guardrails are affixed to open-sided work platforms or floors 4 feet or more above
adjacent floors, and to work platforms or floors above or adjacent to open tanks or vats or
dangerous equipment.
 Engineer tank access, such as cat walks with guard rails around wine tanks when designing new
wineries or when remodeling existing wineries.
 Implement a personal fall protection system and program when other fall prevention systems are
not feasible for fall hazards of four feet or more.
• Muscular-Skeletal
Placing pump over devices and hoses can be hazardous due to the weight and awkwardness of handling
the devices and hoses, which can lead to musculoskeletal stress and crushing injuries of the hands, arms,
and legs.
 Consider having 2 people move and attach pump over devices.
 Ensure that all temporary crush employees are trained by experienced winery personnel in the
placement of pump over devices (POD's), hose attachment, proper attachment of tri-clover clamps
and gaskets.
 If feasible, switch to the lighter weight 'TOAD' pump over device.
 When doing a pump over by hand (using a reducer valve at the end of a hose), to reduce fatigue it
is recommended to rotate workers every 20 minutes.
• Dust and Fermentation Nutrients
Addition of fermentation nutrients/barrel adjuncts (dust hazard). During the fermentation process
winemakers may add yeast nutritional supplements and oak dust or chips to fermenting grapes. Both of
these substances may contain a substantial amount of dust.
 Train employees on possible health hazards related to fermentation nutrients.
 Read MSDS sheets and use appropriate PPE for respiratory protection. Respiratory protection may
not be required per MSDS sheet but employees may voluntarily choose to use it when handling
these materials.