Application of Mini- and Micro-Bioreactors for Microbial Bioprocesses

The development of mini- and micro-cultivation devices allows the optimization of bioprocesses to be speeded up, as well as a better understanding of microbial physiology under process conditions. Mini-bioreactors have been specifically developed for the parallel cultivation of microorganisms under process-representative conditions. These scaled-down models of industrial bioreactors can easily be multiplied to perform high-throughput studies. Micro-cultivation devices have also been designed to obtain deeper insight on the level of microbial physiology. More specifically, single-cell micro-cultivation devices have been developed to study the impact of microbial phenotypic heterogeneity on bioprocesses.