Biocatalysis and Chemical Engineering for Manufacturing Intensification and Sustainabiliy(BIOCHEMIST)

Three UK technology companies, C-Tech Innovation, Ingenza and AM Technology have collaborated in the BIOCHEMIST project to develop new flow process techniques for bio manufacturing. The project integrated all aspects of bioprocess development from enzyme discovery and catalyst engineering, to process design, through to small footprint manufacturing of high value products. The CofloreTM Agitated Cell Reactor (ACR) is a dynamically mixed plug flow reactor and Coflore Agitated Tube Reactor (ATR) - an industrial tube flow reactor both developed by AMTech have demonstrated superior mixing and process control in bioprocess development starting from simple lab scale batch processes. The BIOCHEMIST project successfully implemented pug flow principles to chiral chemical manufacturing through benchtop plug flow reactors (ACRs); and on to the multi-litre production scale agitated tube reactor (ATR). A synthetic oxidation reaction developed by Ingenza for the production of chiral amino acid catalysed by a series of novel d-amino acid oxidases (DAAO) has been developed from lab to pilot scale process by C-Tech Innovation under batch and continuous conditions, and illustrates how application of the ACR and ATR reactors can facilitate process development by improved process control; ease of scale up; minimizing of interruptions in production; reducing reactor size; and the efficient and economic use of biocatalysts