Novozymes wants to stay competitive. Our production process must therefore remain efficient and be performed with low environmental impact. To ensure this, our developers have state-of-the-art pilot plants for recovering and purifying industrial enzymes.
When a new enzyme is discovered in the research laboratories, the next phase is to develop a production method that ensures efficient production of the enzyme with a quality which meets customer expectations. This development and process scale-up is achieved through close collaboration between our development pilot plants, our research laboratories and our various production sites.
Enzyme fermentation is followed by downstream processing, which is the term for the operations performed to transform the fermented product into a purified and concentrated product ready for final formulation. Firstly, the enzyme needs to be extracted from the fermentation biomass. This is achieved by various chemical treatments of the fermentation broth to ensure efficient extraction, followed by removal of the biomass using either centrifugation or filtration.
Following enzyme extraction, the enzyme is concentrated by means of semi-permeable membranes or evaporation. In the case of products with high purity demands, the downstream process often requires a special step to remove unwanted impurities. This is often done by selective precipitation or adsorption of the impurities, although Novozymes is also a master of the advanced crystallization technique by which extremely pure enzyme products can be obtained.