Introduction

Biological Rate Processes

Instructor: Vignesh Muthuvijayan

Introduction
• Sustainability is the basis of nature
• Prior to 1900s: Agriculture & forestry
• Humanity was restricted by the sustainable supply of
inefficiently harvested biomass, which drew energy from the
sun
• Industrial revolution
• Mass production of goods by machines
• Was aided by the development of fossil energy and chemical
industry
• Has led to increasing use of the fossil energy

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 Chemical engineering
• Matured to a major discipline in 1950s
• Eased mass production of commodity chemicals
• Changed the economics or value structure of materials
and chemicals
• A typical chemical process involve units for physical
treatment and units for chemical treatments

Image from Octave Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering,

3rd Edition, 2006, Wiley

Chemical reaction engineering

• This course focuses on the chemical treatment step
• Reactors are the units involved in this step
• Reactors can convert inexpensive raw materials to
valuable products
• Chemical reaction engineering (CRE) is a study that
combines chemical kinetics and reactors in which
the reaction occurs
• CRE is in the heart of producing all industrial
chemicals

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 Design of a reactor
• Selection of safe and efficient reaction system is
crucial for success of an industry
• CRE helps to build chemical reactors and processes
are not by trial-and-error, but by design
• Performance of chemical reactors can be predicted
• Many alternatives can be proposed for a process
• Cost of the reactor must be balanced with the
operating costs

Performance equation
• Used to compare different designs and conditions
Output = f [input, kinetics, contacting]

Image from Octave Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering,

3rd Edition, 2006, Wiley

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 CRE principles & applications

Image from Scott H. Fogler, Elements of Chemical Reaction

Engineering, 4th Edition, 2015, Pearson

Far-reaching applications of CRE principles

Images from Scott H. Fogler, Elements of Chemical Reaction

Engineering, 4th Edition, 2015, Pearson

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 Challenge and potential solution
• Fossil chemical and energy sources are dwindling
• Need to build a society upon renewable and
sustainable resources
• Sustainable processes that exploit the natural
biological cycle

Image from Shijie Liu, Bioprocess Engineering: Kinetics,

Sustainability, and Reactor Design, 1st Edition, 2012, Elsevier

Biorefinery
• A raw material feed, plant lignocellulosic biomass,
is refined to a potpourri of products

Image from Shijie Liu, Bioprocess Engineering: Kinetics, Sustainability,

and Reactor Design, 1st Edition, 2012, Elsevier

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 Platform chemicals from glucose

Image from Shijie Liu, Bioprocess Engineering: Kinetics, Sustainability,

and Reactor Design, 1st Edition, 2012, Elsevier

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Bioprocesses
• Manipulate biological organisms to aid in production of products of
human need
• Engineering life at the most basic level: Genetic
• Selection, breeding or directed evolution has been practiced for
thousands of years
• With advancements in molecular biology, DNA can be engineered at a
quantum leap level or by design
• Biologically converting inexpensive “chemicals” to valuable products
• Bioreactors are used to convert inexpensive and sustainable raw
materials, such as carbohydrates, to valuable products
• Bioprocesses can be engineered to ensure that a
favorable/predictable outcome is achieved

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 Biotechnology
• Use or development of methods of direct genetic
manipulation for a socially desirable goal
• Key element: Use of sophisticated techniques
outside the cell for genetic manipulation
• Biotechnology is applied biology, which bridges
the gap between biology and engineering

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Why so many names?

• Bioengineering is a broad title
• includes work on industrial, medical, and agricultural
systems
• agricultural, electrical, mechanical, industrial,
environmental and chemical engineers, and others
• Biological engineering
• engineering of biology
• initially used by agricultural engineers
• manipulating biological systems, primarily plants and
animals

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 Why so many names?
• Biochemical engineering
• extension of chemical engineering principles to systems using
biological catalysts (enzymes/cells)
• usually subdivided to bioreaction engineering and bioseparations
• Biomedical engineering
• medical instrumentation, diagnostics, etc.
• may overlap with bioengineering and biochemical engineering
when related to animal cell culture
• Biomolecular engineering
• research at the interface of biology and chemical engineering
and is focused at the molecular level

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Bioprocess engineering
• Bioprocess engineers are engineers with training in
biological sciences, especially quantitative and analytical
biological sciences
• Focuses on the engineering and sciences of the bio-based
industrial processes
• Bioprocess engineers
• deal with both microscale (cellular/molecular) and large-scale
(systemwide/industrial) designs and analyses
• predict and model system behaviors
• design detailed equipment and processes
• develop sensors, control algorithms, and manufacturing or
operating strategies

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 Bioprocess engineering
• At the heart of bioprocess engineering is process
kinetics, reactor design, and analysis of biosystems
• This course focuses on kinetics, dynamics, and
reaction engineering involved in the bioprocess
engineering

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Topics of bioreaction engineering

Image from John Villadsen, Jens Nielsen, Gunnar Liden,

Bioreaction Engineering Principles, 3rd Edition, 2011, Springer

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 Bioreaction engineering principles &
applications

Image from Shijie Liu, Bioprocess Engineering: Kinetics, Sustainability,

and Reactor Design, 1st Edition, 2012, Elsevier

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Mathematics & Biology

Image from XKCD

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 Biology & Engineering
• Biologists and engineers are trained very differently
• Unlike physics & chemistry, biology relies less on theories of
mathematics and quantitative methods (except statistics)
• Progress in biology is due to improvements in experimental
tools
• Qualitative results are analyzed to formulate descriptive
models
• Biologists are very strong in laboratory tools and analyzing
experimental results from complex systems
• However, biologists usually have an incomplete background in
mathematics

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Biology & Engineering

• Engineers usually possess a very good background in the
physical and mathematical sciences
• Often theory leads to mathematical formulations
• Validity of theory is tested by comparing predicted and
experimental data
• Biologists are better at proposing experimentally testable
hypotheses, experimental design, and interpretation of
results
• In the early stages of biotechnology, engineers were not
familiar with the experimental tools of biologists

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 Biology & Engineering
• Today, bioprocess engineers use very
sophisticated experimental techniques and
strategies
• Skills of the engineer and a biologist are
complementary
• Integration of these skills is required to convert
promises of molecular biology to manufacture of
new products

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