Monitoring of Yeast Metabolism with Calorimetry

A system for calorimetric measurements is established in a 1500 L pilot bioreactor. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker’s yeast has three metabolic pathways: 1) purely oxidative, glucose consuming; 2) purely reductive, glucose consuming and ethanol producing and 3) purely oxidative, ethanol consuming. Designing experiments to lead the yeast to a single pathway, the accuracy of the calorimetric measurements are verified. Using on-line data of microbial heat production and substrate consumption, the combustion enthalpies of glucose and ethanol in purely oxidative (aerobic) fed batch fermentations are determined as 15900 and 29000 kJ/kg respectively, Combustion enthalpy of glucose in purely reductive (anaerobic) environment is determined as 511 kJ/kg. These values are in good corresponding with literature data. It is now possible to determine the fraction of substrate uptake utilized for energy (catabolism, k) and biosynthesis (anabolism, a) metabolisms on-line. In oxidative (aerobic) fermentations we determined kSox=0.45 for glucose, kEox=0.63 for ethanol and in reductive (anaerobic) fermentations kSred=0.96 for glucose; the anabolism factors are aSox=0.55, aEox=0.37 and aSred=0.04 respectively. The single pathways can occur together so that an experiment is designed with changing environmental conditions to prove the overall calorimetric model. The result is that measured and the calculated microbial heat energy rates are in good accordance. Calorimetric measurements can be used to monitor yeast metabolism on-line, for advanced control strategies or, to predict fermentations or for designing heat exchanger or bioreactor systems.