Economics of Fermentation Processes

The fermentation process plays a pivotal role in the production of biopharmaceuticals, food processing, beverage and biofuels. With the advancement in biotechnology, understanding the economics of the fermentation process becomes indispensable in assessing the feasibility of the production process, which ultimately affects the selling price of the final product. There are several factors such as cost of raw material, consumables and equipment, downstream processing, human resources involved, etc. that are responsible for the overall cost of a fermentation process. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the fermentation economics and discusses all these factors in detail. It also talks about different software tools which are essential to estimate the cost of a bioprocess. The chapter also highlights the role of bioprocess optimization in increasing the efficiency of the process while reducing the production cost. The advantages of the use of computational tools for process optimization over the traditional one factor at a time approach to significantly reduce the time and cost required for experimentation are also discussed. Finally, the strategies of strain improvement for enhanced production of the desired product are also provided in detail in this chapter.