Introduction to Bioprocess Technology

Abstract

Bioprocess technology is the amalgamation of technology with bioprocess which is the use of any living cell (microorganism or merely its enzymes) or one of its components with defined nutritive supplements and under controlled conditions to obtain a specific desirable product that is useful for mankind. Bioprocess technology is the alteration of significant processes to create value-added products. It deals with designing and developing equipment and processes for products such as food, chemicals, feed, nutraceuticals, amino acids, polymers, or abundantly required and useful pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, viral vaccines, etc. The use of these processes can be traced back to as old as the ancient Egyptian period where unknowingly they employed this technology for the production of beers, wines, bread, cheese, yogurts, and fermented pickles. The current perspective of bioprocess technology deals with the use of exceedingly advanced computer-operated automatic bioreactors to produce elevated quantity and quality of desired end product around which the process is curated. Future applications of bioprocess technology have significant potential since they will be used in large-scale industries, where its use is currently limited. It has been anticipated that combining bioinformatics and nanotechnology with bioprocess technology would open countless unexplored doors and lead to substantial progress in understanding complex biological systems and their underlying mechanisms and designing and screening new biologically useful components. Besides umpteen useful traits, bioprocess technology still needs to overcome a large number of hurdles and possess an advantage over other competing methods such as chemical engineering to be viable in any specific industrial context. Nevertheless, this technology holds great potential which needs to be efficiently explored to use it to the best of its capabilities.