The present text is a complete revision of the 2nd edition from 2003 of
the book with the same title. In recognition of the fast pace at which
biotechnology is moving we have rewritten several chapters to include
new scientific progress in the field from 2000 to 2010. More important
we have changed the focus of the book to support its use, not only in
universities, but also as a guide to design new processes and equipment
in the bio-industry. A new chapter has been included on the prospects of
the bio-refinery to replace many of the oil- and gas based processes for
production of especially bulk chemicals. This chapter also serves to
make students in Chemical Engineering and in the Bio-Sciences
enthusiastic about the whole research field. As in previous editions we
hope that the book can be used as textbook for classes, even at the
undergraduate level, where chemical engineering students come to work
side by side with students from biochemistry and microbiology. To help
the chemical engineering students Chapter 1 includes a brief review of
the most important parts of microbial metabolism. In our opinion this
review is sufficient to understand microbial physiology at a
sufficiently high level to profit from the rest of the book. Likewise
the bio-students will not be overwhelmed by mathematics, but since the
objective of the book is to teach quantitative process analysis and
process design at a hands-on level some mathematics and model analysis
is needed. We hope that the about 100 detailed examples and text notes,
together with many instructive problems will be sufficient to illustrate
how model analysis is used, also in Bio-reaction Engineering.
