Chemical Engineering Science 57 (2002) 1235 1236
www.elsevier.com/locate/ces
Book review
Bioprocess engineering
Michael L. Shuler and Fikret Kargi; Prentice-Hall Inter-
national Series in the Physical and Chemical Engineering
Sciences, Englewood Cli.s, NJ, 2nd Edition, 2002, ISBN
0-13-081908-5
In the preface to the 5rst edition (1992) of the book the
authors de5ne Bioprocess Engineering as the application
of engineering principles to design, develop and analyse
processes using biocatalysts (to form) desirable compounds
or (to destruct) unwanted or hazardous substances. The tools
of the engineer, particularly the chemical engineer will be
essential to the successful exploitation of bioprocesses.
The last 10 years has seen an explosive development of
bioprocesses, not only for pharmaceuticals and other low
volume, high-value added products, but also for production
of commodity chemicals in competition with petrochemi-
cal synthesis routes. The desirability to include some form
of Biotechnology education in the curricula of Chemical
Engineering is now recognized worldwide: the students de-
mand it, and the teachers discover an ever increasing range
of challenging research topics in biotechnology. The excite-
ment is felt at all conferences or symposia in Biocatalysts,
Metabolic engineering, Cell-culture, Bio-mechanics
or Tissue Engineering. The research can be made
on almost virginal territory, in the borderland between
disciplines, and sometimes substantial economic rewards
are attained at the end of the journey.
The role of the chemical engineer in bio-research which
was emphasized by the authors has certainly not diminished
during the last 10 years. With the introduction, during re-
cent years of many large-scale bioprocesses the importance
of modelling, control and optimization as well as the in-
ventiveness and experience of the engineer in scale-up and
integration of process steps into an economically viable
overall process will undoubtedly strengthen the position of
the engineer in the cooperation with bio-scientists which is
essential for successful implementation of bioprocesses.
A crude application of basic chemical engineering disci-
plines such as mass-transport and reaction engineering will,
however, not su@ce. Some papers written in the typical for-
mat of chemical engineering modelling papers are simply
pathetic in their lack of relevance for bio-reaction systems.
To do a useful job in bioprocesses the engineering student
must be familiar with a whole spectrum of topics, which to-
day form the nucleus of a bio-science education: biochem-
istry and molecular biology to name two vast subjects each
with many sub-topics. Also unit processes such as Expanded
0009-2509/02/$ - see front matter ? 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 0 9 - 2 5 0 9 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 0 6 - 4
bed Adsorption, Gel Filtration and Membrane Separation
that are hardly recognized in classical unit operation courses
must be known by the chemical engineer=bio-engineer.
Shuler and Kargi present their new, greatly revised edition
of Bioprocess Engineering with no illusion that all topics
relevant for the prospective bio-engineering scientist can be
learnt through the study of one single textbook. Rather, they
wish to introduce what also the present reviewer believes
are the most important topics of biotechnology, and there-
after refer the reader to specialized texts for a more detailed
account of each topic.
At one end of the spectrum of topics covered in Biopro-
cess Engineering one 5nds Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 8 (122
pages) in which basic concepts of cell biology is treated. At
the other end one 5nds small overview chapters on animal
cell cultures, plant cell cultures and medico-biotechnology
(Chapters 12, 13, 15 47 pages) and an appendix (20
pages), which describes seven typical submerged cultiva-
tions of microorganisms, all with a huge economic impact.
In between the very basic topics and the applications one
5nds the engineering topics: stoichiometry, kinetics of
bioreactions, bioreactors, and down-stream recovery and
puri5cation (Chapters 7, 6, 9, 10, 11203 pages). Very early
enzyme kinetics is discussed (Chapter 3), and almost at the
end (Chapter 16) mixed microbial cultures with a brief,
but precise introduction to wastewater treatment processes.
Problems concerned with the use of genetically engineered
organisms (choice of hostvector systems, and rever-
sion of the engineered organism to the wild-type strain)
are discussed in a separate chapter 14also near the end
of the text.
This brief overview of the contents of the text demon-
strates that the authors have tried to introduce all the major
aspects of modern bioprocesses. A reader with no previ-
ous exposure to the major metabolic pathways of bacteria
and lower eucaryotes will probably 5nd the short Chapter 5
(22 pages) quite easy to read and very informative, and in
Chapter 12 on animal cell cultures he will learn that the han-
dling of higher eucaryotes is quite di.erent from that of
a yeastor a lactic bacteria culture. The pure bioscience
student will obtain a basic knowledge of design and oper-
ation of bioreactors (Chapters 9 and 10) and of the eco-
nomics of bioprocesses from the industrial case studies in
the appendix.
In many ways Shuler and Kargis text resembles Bailey
and Ollis Biochemical Engineering Fundamentals. In both
cases the second edition represents a major increase in the
number of topics covered. The second edition (1986) of
1236 Book review / Chemical Engineering Science 57 (2002) 1235 1236
Bailey and Ollis gives more details on the biochemistry, but
its more than 1000 pages does not give a deeper insight in
any particular subject than the present book of 533 pages,
and naturally some topics which had not even appeared in the
scienti5c journals in 1986 are now su@ciently well known
to be included in an encyclopaedia-like textbook published
in 2002.
The weaknesses of an encyclopaedical treatment are
also apparent in both texts. Trying to present the
whole scenery of Biotechnology in one text may also make it
very di@cult to identify the audience for the book. An en-
gineering student should qualify himself in a quantitative
treatment of the subject and one might fear that the student
will not be su@ciently exposed to the problems of quanti-
tative biotechnology either in Bailey and Ollis or in Shuler
and Kargi. Stoichiometry as seen in black-box models
(Chapter 7) or in Metabolic Pathway Models (a subject
which is cursorily dismissed in one short paragraph
p. 455 in Chapter 14) is an entry-point for any student
who wants to understand cell physiology. Stoichiometric
considerations in bioreactions are much more important
than for ordinary chemical reactions and the change in
stoichiometry with increasing Jux through the metabolic
network has no counterpart in chemistry. Also network
calculations will immediately challenge chemical engineer-
ing students and will provide opportunities to use their
knowledge of e.g. linear algebra on relevant problems.
The treatment of kinetics of bioreactions in Chapters 6
and 9 is also to some extent disappointing and not up-
dated from Bailey and Ollis (1977 or 1986). Rates of
bioreactions are best determined in steady-state contin-
uous reactors and this should be introduced before the
stoichiometry in Chapter 7. Kinetics are also best ex-
tracted from steady-state datahence some material at
the end of Chapter 6 should precede the batch data in the
beginning of the chapter. By formulating a section heading
(Chapter 6.4) How cells grow in continuous culture the
authors may unconsciously lend support to the myth that
the kinetics of bioreactions carried out in batch reactors is
somehow di.erent from the kinetics obtained in continuous
reactors. Batch reactors are unsuited for kinetic investiga-
tions but the kinetics derived from continuous reactors can
be used to design batch processesexcept when a changing
cell activity necessitates that a much more detailed kinetic
model must be used.
One may also have wished that the many hopeless un-
structured kinetic models (Tessier, Moser, Contois, etc.)
could have been buried. A section on models for rapid tran-
sients would have been more useful. Publications on this
subject now appear in the scienti5c journals, and the inter-
pretation of transients throws much light on the regula-
tion of metabolic pathways, decoupling of catabolism and
anabolism, etc.
Perhaps this criticism is unfairit is at least completely
wrong to assume that the authors who work in the front
line of biotechnology research are not aware of the weak-
nesses in the presentation of individual topics. Perhaps, the
encyclopaedial treatment of bioprocesses is not satisfac-
tory anymore, and we will have to use a combination of
textbooks (biochemistry, molecular biology, bioreactions,
bioseparations) to give an adequate fundamental education
in biotechnology.
John Villadsen
Department of Biotechnology
Technical University of Denmark
BioCentrum-DTU Building 223
2800 Lyngby, Denmark
E-mail address: john.villadsen@biocentrum.dtu.dk
(J. Villadsen)