In situ product removal

Abstract During current years, the industrial biotechnology area has grown at giant steps, supported by the necessity of a sustainable supply chain and the inevitable depletion of petrochemical feedstocks. From this accelerated growth, the need for the development of more efficient bioprocesses in term of productivity and cost has emerged. A substantial number of bioprocesses have their potential hindered by product inhibition, a phenomenon that appears due to microbial metabolites produced in concentrations that become toxic even for the producing microorganism. In situ product recovery (ISPR) appears as a strategy to overcome such problems by primary recovery stage to the upstream, thus continuously extracting a desired or undesired target molecule from the fermentation broth as soon as it is produced. In this chapter, we will review the inherent advantages of implementing this technology in the production process, not only in terms of productivity, but also in equipment. A revision across the main the ISPR technologies can be found, explaining their main mechanisms and configurations, the appropriate scenarios to use each one and the main factors that must be considered that affect process efficiency. The chapter will be divided into three parts according to the types of ISPR that are reviewed, liquid–liquid, solid–liquid and gas–liquid techniques. Some recent trends and further perspectives for each method are also mentioned leaving space for further analysis of these technologies.