Development of a simultaneous bioreactor system for characterization of gas production kinetics of methanogenic archaea at high pressure.

Cultivation of methanogens under high pressure offers a great opportunity in biotechnological processes, one of which is the improvement of the gas-liquid transfer of substrate gases into the medium broth. This article describes a newly developed simultaneous bioreactor system consisting of four identical cultivation vessels suitable for investigation of microbial activity at pressures up to 50 bar and temperatures up to 145°C. Initial pressure studies at 10 and 50 bar of the autotrophic and hydrogenotrophic methanogens , , and were performed to evaluate the reproducibility of the system as well as to test the productivity of these strains.