Penicilin Production

Microorganism selection

The highest antibacterial activity and highest productivity was found in P. chrysogenum. And also P. chrysogenum transforms substrates rich in carbohydrates into penicillin. Because of these reasons P. chrysogenum strain is chosen for penicillin G fermentation.

Microorganism can be kept lyophilized or stored as a spore suspension 20% glycerol at -20 0C

Process description

The classical penicillin production process is an aerobic fermentation in fed batch fermentors made with some Penicillium strains, usually Penicillium chrysogenum The incubation of the culture strains provides the seed that grows in seed fermentors until a stage of maturity is

reached. Then, the seed is transferred to fermentor. These fermentors are operated in fed-batch mode under standard conditions in order to optimize the synthesis of penicillin. After that, the product is withdrawn by solvent extraction in the downstream.

Inoculum development

The first step in the fermentation process is inoculation of cultures. The main purpose of this and subsequent inoculum development steps is to increase the concentration of fungal mycelium (biomass) to give a population which can be added to the next step to assure that each step will be reasonably short and the large-scale equipment is used efficiently.

Inoculum development stages are typically conducted at around 25 0C in shake cultures and agitated vessels.

The media had the following constituents:

NaNO3, g : 3.00

KCl, g : 0.50

MgSO4.7H2O, g : 0.50

FeSO4.7H2O, g : 0.01

KH2PO4, g : 1.00

Glucose, g : 40.00

Distilled water, l : 1.00

All components was autoclaved. The final pH was adjusted to 6. In seven 250 ml flasks; 100 ml of the above media were taken and the flasks were re-autoclaved at 1.0546 kgf/cm2

(15 psi). Then 10 ml