The INRA-Dijon reactors: Designs and applications

A brief review of reactors for solid state fermentation is presented, along with the description of the INRA-Dijon reactors. These reactors ranging from a prepilot (50 L) to a pilot plant (1.6 m(3)), have been developed for research needs, scale-up studies and development of different industrial applications. MRA-Dijon reactors are of the same type, i.e., packed bed reactors with forced aeration through the culture layer and have been used for different non-sterile processes. Although solid state fermentation processes are very often carried out in non-aseptic conditions, the development of sterile pilot equipment and processes may offer interesting alternatives to submerged fermentation for different applications (pharmaceutical products, human foods, culture of genetically modified micro-organisms, etc). The paper presents detailed information on a small reactor (1 L capacity) for lab-scale studies and a pilot reactor (50 L capacity) for scale-up studies. In addition, the examples of industrial applications developed in the platform for protein enrichment of by-products, enzyme production and production of antagonistic fungi for the biological control are also presented.