Process considerations for the scale-up and implementation of biocatalysis

With increasing emphasis on renewable feed-stocks and green chemistry, biocatalytic processes will have an important role in the next generation of industrial processes for chemical production. However, in comparison with conventional industrial chemistry, the use of bioprocesses in general and biocatalysis in particular is a rather young technology. Although significant progress has been made in the implementation of new processes (especially in the pharmaceutical industry) no fixed methods for process design have been established to date. In this paper we present some of the considerations required to scale-up a biocatalytic process and some of the recently developed engineering tools available to assist in this procedure. The tools will have a decisive role in helping to identify bottlenecks in the biocatalytic development process and to justify where to put effort and resources.