Group I Bioreactors: Unaerated and Unmixed

6.4 Conclusions

The layer of substrate in trays is limited to a bed height of around 5 cm by considerations of heat and O₂ transfer within the bed. Therefore scale-up of the process cannot be achieved by increasing the bed height. The only manner to scale up a tray process to large scale is to increase the surface area of the trays, which is equivalent to saying that the large-scale process must use a large number of trays of the same size as those in which the laboratory studies were done. The use of large numbers of trays implies the necessity either for manual handling or highly sophisticated robotic systems, both of which can be inordinately expensive. However, in regions in which manual labor costs are low, such tray-type processes may find applications.