Yeast biomass production: a new approach in glucose-limited feeding strategy.

The aim of this work was to implement experimentally a simple glucose-limited feeding strategy for yeast biomass production in a bubble column reactor based on a spreadsheet simulator suitable for industrial application. In biomass production process using Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains, one of the constraints is the strong tendency of these species to metabolize sugars anaerobically due to catabolite repression, leading to low values of biomass yield on substrate. The usual strategy to control this metabolic tendency is the use of a fed-batch process in which where the sugar source is fed incrementally and total sugar concentration in broth is maintained below a determined value.