Food and Industrial Biotechnology

The main objective of the course is to provide fundamental principles of chemical engineering which are necessary to understand and design an industrial biotechnological process. Specific training objectives will focus on the development and understanding of mass and energy balances, as well as on the study of the kinetic and thermodynamic relationships to be applied for the design of several configurations of reactors, including the biological ones. Other objectives rely on the description of the role of mass transport phenomena in the biological reactor (with particular reference to oxygen supply to aerobic reactors) and on the study of the main unit operations of chemical engineering for product separation and purification. The final part of the course will be dedicated to the description of examples of biotechnological processes for energy recovery from wastes as well as to the description of selected environmental and industrial applications of biotechnological processes. Students who have passed the exam will be able to know and understand (acquired knowledge):  the kinetics of biological reactions  the development of material and energy balances  the description of mass transfer phenomena  the sizing of a biological reactor  the main differences among biological reactor configurations  the principles of the main unit operations of separation  the environmental application of biotechnological processes for energy recovery Students who have passed the exam will be able (acquired skills):  describe the kinetics of biological reactions  determinate the volume of a biological reactor for a given application  choose the type of biological reactor suitable for satisfying a specific biotechnological process  identify the main steps characterizing a biotechnological process  identify the best operating conditions of each step of the process