BE401 Industrial Processing Penicillin Recovery Strategies

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1926. Penicillin has become the most demanded antibiotic for treatment of bacterial infections worldwide. In the extraction of Penicillin G there are numerous stages: The downstream process are essentially Broth Filtration, Filtrate Cooling, Further Filtration, Extraction of Penicillin with Solvent, Carbon Treatment, Transfer back to Aqueous Phase, Solvent Recovery, Crystallisation, Crystal Washing and Drying of Crystals. There are numerous technologies that can be applied to downstream processing. It is important to revise the downstream process when newer technologies become available. The main penicillin downstream processes should be analyzed in detail and any other alternatives should be identified. This requires the main downstream processes to be described in detail, and a search for alternatives through research carried out. In our investigation we discovered many alternatives to the main downstream processes. Other alternatives were also discussed including the use of alcohols to further improve efficienty, the use of SLM and ELM membranes to reduce the number of stages, and surfactants to stabilise the membranes. Alternatives to these systems have been suggested. These include the use of an extraction decanter invented by Westfalia Separator Industries to remove the broth-filtration stage of the downstream process, and the use of newly invented polymers (Skelland and Meng 2004) to remove the instability of membranes.