At the University of Boras in Sweden, researchers have scaled up second-generation bioethanol production from beech wood chips using an acetone-based organosolv fractionation process. With the help of the INFORS HT Multifors bench-top bioreactor, they confirmed high fermentation efficiency at the 10-L scale, reaching ethanol yields of up to 95% from glucose-rich C6 streams. This study illustrates how optimized biomass pre-treatment and fermentation workflows can drive more efficient and scalable biofuel production.

At Lund University, Division of Food and Pharma, researchers studied the role of annealing in the freeze-drying of probiotic bacteria. Using the INFORS HT Multifors bioreactor and eve software, they controlled the fermentation of Limosilactobacillus reuteri to produce consistent cell cultures for downstream drying. Their results show that increased annealing time leads to thicker encapsulating structures and enhanced storage stability, providing a clearer path to developing more robust probiotic products.

Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg developed and tested methods to improve the stability and recyclability of a PET-degrading enzyme for plastic recycling. Using the INFORS HT Labfors bioreactor, the team compared several immobilization strategies and found that pH-responsive polymers delivered the best results, retaining about 80% of enzyme activity and enabling up to five PET degradation cycles. In batch reactions, the process achieved more than 97% terephthalic acid yield in less than 14 hours for the first three cycles and about 78% yield in the fifth cycle. These findings support more efficient and scalable processes for enzymatic PET recycling.

Feeding strategy is one of the most influential variables in any bioprocess. Whether you’re working with bacterial, yeast, fungal, or mammalian cell cultures, how you supply nutrients affects everything from growth rates and yields to oxygen demand and product quality. The choice between batch, fed-batch, and continuous culture depends on your organism, application, and production goals. Fortunately, modern bioreactor systems like those from INFORS HT make it easy to implement any of these strategies at lab or pilot scale.