THE EFFECTS OF FERMENTATION CONDITIONS ON YEAST-CELL DEBRIS PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION DURING HIGH-PRESSURE HOMOGENIZATION

Experiments were performed to characterize the particle size distribut ion of bakers' yeast cells during high pressure homogenisation. Result s were obtained for mechanically agitated batch and continuously grown cultures under a range of operating conditions. It was found that the dependency of cell debris size distribution on the number of passes t hrough the homogeniser and the homogeniser pressure was independent of the cell properties and culture conditions, but for a fixed pressure and number of passes the extent of disruption was strongly affected by the operating conditions in the fermenter. The entire cell debris siz e distributions were successfully simulated using the mean and varianc e of the distributions and a previously published model equation which related these parameters to the operating pressure and number of pass es through the homogeniser.