Measurement of metabolic heat in a production-scale bioreactor by continuous and dynamic calorimetry

Measurement of metabolic heat has been attempted in an industrial-scale bioreactor using continuous and dynamic heat balance calorimetry. The contributions of individual heat sources influencing the temperature of the broth were evaluated and the magnitude of metabolic heat was calculated from general energy balance. Good correlations were obtained between oxygen uptake rate (OUR) and metabolic heat with heat yield under continuous and dynamic conditions with the values of Y-Q/O=444 kJ/mole O-2 and Y-Q/O=431 kJ/mole O-2, respectively. There was also correlation between biomass production and heat generation. The value of heat yield, Y-Q/X, was calculated to be 14546 kJ/kg; however, this was not constant and slightly decreased towards the end of fermentation. A similar value for heat yield was obtained under dynamic conditions and found to be 14667 kJ/kg. The consistency of experimental data was checked using carbon, electron, and heat balances. It was shown that reasonable accuracy could be achieved in an industrial environment. The difficult-to-measure variable biomass concentration was estimated using continuous metabolic heat flux, and good correlation was obtained between measured and estimated biomass concentrations. The results of this study suggest that heat balance around an industrial bioreactor can be simplified by accurately identifying individual heat sources as opposed to laboratory bioreactors where the contribution of each source can have significant impact. This reduces the number of measurements for accurate heat balance and makes use of heat balance feasible in a large scale.