CHE324

Biochemical
Engineering
BY
Kissa R. Alunga
Bsc, Msc Chem Eng
Lecture 1
 Course Content

Basic Concept of Enzymes

Production and Purification

of enzymes

Application of Enzymes
Introduction
Biochemical engineering?
• Deals with biochemical processes??
• Biochemical process is an essential part of
many food, chemical and
pharmaceutical industries.
• Biochemical processes make use of
microbial, animal and plant cells and
components of cells such as enzymes to
manufacture new products and also for
waste water treatment
What is Biochemical
Engineering?
Biochemical engineering may be considered as
a multidisciplinary field that implements
engineering principles to design and operate
unit processes required to successfully
produce high quality bio-products.
Chemical engineering principles play a central
role to produce biochemical products on a
large scale for marketing in purified form.
Chemical
engineering Biochemical engineering
• Deals with mostly biological
• Deals with synthetic or organisms and their
chemical processes biochemical pathways
• Involves the design and • Involves studying the
operation of industrial behavior of the living cells in
manufacturing plants the bioreactor
• Reactants form products • Reactants form products in
in the presence of a the presence of biological
chemical catalyst catalyst
• The chemical reactions • Biochemical reactions occur
at ambient temperature and
occur at high temperature pressure
and pressure
Bioreactor
 Advantages of the biochemical products
Sustainability
Less carbon and water footprint
Creates rural employment opportunities
Less emissions of pollutants to the
environment
Biodegradability and recyclability
High productivity
Use of raw materials from the local
sources
 Course objectives
• To provide a general understanding of the
basic concepts of microbiology, biochemistry
and chemical/biochemical reaction kinetics.

• To apply the chemical engineering principles

to bioreactor analysis and design, upstream,
downstream processing and bioprocess
optimization and control
 Scope and relevance
• Deals with the most complicated life systems as compared to chemical
engineering
• Describes the behavior of any life system in terms of mathematical form is the
basic essence of biochemical engineering.
• It’s an interdisciplinary subject where biologists, physicist, chemist,
technologist and mathematician all join hand to develop realistic models.
• This specialized subject comprises of transport processes, sophisticated
advanced control system besides conventional biology, physics and
mathematics.
• The student studying this course will be able to apply the acquired knowledge
in various professional fields like process development, design, simulation,
environmental science, etc.
 References
• Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry 5 th Edition by David
L. Nelson, Micheal M. Cox.
• Lee JM, ‘Biochemical Engineering’, Prentice Hall (1992)
• Levenspiel, O “Chemical reaction engineering” third
edition.wiley
• Bailey and Ollis, ‘Biochemical Engineering fundamentals’,
McGraw Hill (1996)
• Shuler, M.L and Kargi, F. Bioprocess Engineering, Basic
concepts. Second edition,2002.prentice-Hall inc.
• Doran, P.M, “Bioprocessing Engineering Principles”
Academic press, Elsevier
THANK YOU

Any Questions?