The bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum has been aerobically cultured in a batch fermenter vessel on glucose at pH 7.0 and 20 °C to produce Glutamic acid for the manufacture of Mono Sodium Glutamate, a flavour compound for the food industry. The time course data for a typical batch culture of this bacterium in a fermenter vessel are given below:

Time (h) Cell dry weight (g l-1) Glucose concentration (g l-1) Glutamic acid concentration (g l-1) 0 1.22 100 0 8 1.35 97.0 0.5 18 2.72 92.6 5.5 28 7.39 75.0 15.0 40 25.8 32.0 34.0 45 42.52 20.5 40.0 50 73.70 10.3 45.0 60 90.01 2.1 48.0 70 99.48 0.0 48.5

How many production scale fermenters, each of 100 m3 operating liquid volume, would be needed to make 15,000 tonnes per year of Glutamic acid? Each batch vessel is operated for the harvest time of complete carbon substrate utilisation (70 hours), and takes an additional 5 hours to load with liquid medium, to sterilise, and to inoculate with bacterial culture, and 1 hour to drain after the aerobic batch fermentation. Take a process year to be 320 days.

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