I need to grow enough of a single bacteria strain from the lab to a 7 barrel tank in the field.?

Question

I am an engineer, not a scientist. We have this lab growing this strain of bacteria that we need to put in a 7 barrel pilot tank ( closed bioreactor) in the field. I need help on how to grow the bacteria from the lab scale to have enough viable bacteria in the pilot bioreactor without contamination.

I reckoned it would be the same way yeast is grown for brewing but I have little or no experience. I am looking for a draft of how to take bacteria from an agar plate and grow enough to have at least a concentration of about a million viable cells in my bioreactor.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can grow a starter culture in an Erlenmyer flask of broth medium. The bioreactor can be sterilized with 70% ethanol and then filled with sterile broth medium. The easiest way to sterilize broth medium is to filter it through a 0.22 membrane filter. Add the starter culture to the bioreacter. In two or three days, you will get your job done.

Answer 2

Well, a million viable cells is generally very little in terms of bacteria. Also a million viable cells isn't a concentration- concentration is when it's expressed in terms of volume eg. a million cells per ml of culture. The cell density the bacteria get to depends on the culture medium you use to grow them in, the bacterial strain you are using, and the culture conditions you need to grow them under. If it were a lab strain of E. coli for example, you could easily grow 1000 times that many in just a few ml of nutrient broth in the lab. More details please, I am a scientist, not an engineer!!! :)