Why Your Titer Drops When You Go to Pilot Scale
The three most common reasons precision fermentation products underperform at pilot scale — and how each maps to a specific FBA constraint that was missing from your bench model.
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Scale-up science, plainly written.
Technical writing on fermentation process development, FBA methodology, and the physics of scale-up — for scientists who want to understand the first principles, not just the procedure.
How to Read Your kLa Data Without Getting Fooled by Your DO Probe
Your DO probe reports what's happening near the probe tip, not the bulk average. How probe position, measurement frequency, and vessel mixing time interact to produce the number you're actually seeing.
Acetate Overflow in E. coli Fed-Batch: What FBA Tells You That Glucose Sensors Don't
Why acetate accumulates before your glucose sensor shows anything wrong — and the specific flux constraints that determine where your overflow onset actually sits.
Flux Balance Analysis for Bioprocess Engineers: A Non-Academic Introduction
FBA explained without the academic formalism — what it is, how it works, what it can and can't predict, and why it's useful for fed-batch scale-up even without a systems biology team.
Mycoprotein Scale-Up: DO Management for Fusarium venenatum Continuous Culture
How DO setpoint selection at scale affects fumarate accumulation, fiber morphology, and harvest quality in mycoprotein production — and the modeling approach for each transition.
Pichia pastoris Induction Transitions: Why DO Crashes and What to Do About It
The glycerol-to-methanol transition is the most dangerous DO event in a P. pastoris fed-batch. Here's the stoichiometry behind it and how to calculate the agitation and sparging pre-conditions that prevent the crash.
The Scale-Up Decision Framework: When to Model, When to Run, When to Wait
Not every process parameter question needs a simulation. A practical framework for deciding when metabolic modeling will reduce risk vs when the bench run is already the answer.
Genome-Scale Models in Industrial Fermentation: What They Are Actually Good For
GEMs are powerful but routinely misapplied in industrial contexts. An honest assessment of where genome-scale FBA adds value in a production bioprocess and where it doesn't justify the investment.
Hydrostatic Pressure at Commercial Scale: The DO Effect Nobody Talks About
At 10,000L, the pressure gradient between vessel top and bottom changes the DO environment in ways a pilot-scale probe will never show you. The quantitative case for pressure-corrected kLa at commercial scale.
Exponential vs Linear vs DO-Stat Feeding: Which Strategy Fits Your Process?
A mechanistic comparison of the three common fed-batch glucose feed strategies. When exponential feeding hits its ceiling, when DO-stat fallback matters, and how overflow risk differs between strategies at scale.
Strain Selection Before the Pilot: Using Flux Phenotype to Pick the Right Candidate
Not all high-titer bench strains are equally scale-up-ready. How metabolic flux phenotyping from bench data predicts which strain candidates will maintain their performance under the physical constraints of pilot scale.
OPC-UA in Fermentation Data Infrastructure: What It Is and Why It Matters for Modeling
OPC-UA is the industrial standard for real-time process data, and understanding it is increasingly relevant for fermentation scientists working with modern DCS platforms. A practical introduction with a focus on what data is available for model inputs.
Impeller Selection and Oxygen Transfer: A Practical Guide for Aerobic Fermentation Scale-Up
Rushton vs PBT vs A315 — how impeller geometry affects kLa, shear sensitivity, and mixing time in aerobic fermentation, and what to specify when you're building or leasing a new pilot or commercial vessel.