SUMMARY
Background: Invert sugar is used greatly in food and pharmaceutical industries. This paper describes scaling-up
batch conditions for sucrose inversion catalyzed by the recombinant Pichia pastoris BfrA4X whole cells
expressing Thermotoga maritima invertase entrapped in calcium alginate beads. For the first time, we describe
the application of a kinetic model to predict the fractional conversion expected during sucrose hydrolysis
reaction in both, a model and a prototype bioreactor with 0.5- and 5-L working volume, respectively.
Results: Different scaled-up criteria used to operate the 0.5-L bioreactor were analyzed to explore the invert sugar
large scale production. After model inversion studies, a 5-L scaled-up reaction system was performed in a 7-L
stirred reactor. Both scaled-up criteria, immobilized biocatalyst dosage and stirring speed, were analyzed in
each type of bioreactors and the collected data were used to ensure an efficient scale-up of this biocatalyst.
Conclusions: To date, there is not enough information to describe the large-scale production of invert sugar using
different scaled-up criteria such as dose of immobilized biocatalyst and stirring speed effect on mass transfer. The
present study results constitute a valuable tool to successfully carry out this type of high-scale operation for
industrial purposes.