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Book review
0009-2509/02/$ - see front matter ? 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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1236 Book review / Chemical Engineering Science 57 (2002) 1235 1236
Bailey and Ollis gives more details on the biochemistry, but beginning of the chapter. By formulating a section heading
its more than 1000 pages does not give a deeper insight in (Chapter 6.4) How cells grow in continuous culture the
any particular subject than the present book of 533 pages, authors may unconsciously lend support to the myth that
and naturally some topics which had not even appeared in the the kinetics of bioreactions carried out in batch reactors is
scienti5c journals in 1986 are now su@ciently well known somehow di.erent from the kinetics obtained in continuous
to be included in an encyclopaedia-like textbook published reactors. Batch reactors are unsuited for kinetic investiga-
in 2002. tions but the kinetics derived from continuous reactors can
The weaknesses of an encyclopaedical treatment are be used to design batch processesexcept when a changing
also apparent in both texts. Trying to present the cell activity necessitates that a much more detailed kinetic
whole scenery of Biotechnology in one text may also make it model must be used.
very di@cult to identify the audience for the book. An en- One may also have wished that the many hopeless un-
gineering student should qualify himself in a quantitative structured kinetic models (Tessier, Moser, Contois, etc.)
treatment of the subject and one might fear that the student could have been buried. A section on models for rapid tran-
will not be su@ciently exposed to the problems of quanti- sients would have been more useful. Publications on this
tative biotechnology either in Bailey and Ollis or in Shuler subject now appear in the scienti5c journals, and the inter-
and Kargi. Stoichiometry as seen in black-box models pretation of transients throws much light on the regula-
(Chapter 7) or in Metabolic Pathway Models (a subject tion of metabolic pathways, decoupling of catabolism and
which is cursorily dismissed in one short paragraph anabolism, etc.
p. 455 in Chapter 14) is an entry-point for any student Perhaps this criticism is unfairit is at least completely
who wants to understand cell physiology. Stoichiometric wrong to assume that the authors who work in the front
considerations in bioreactions are much more important line of biotechnology research are not aware of the weak-
than for ordinary chemical reactions and the change in nesses in the presentation of individual topics. Perhaps, the
stoichiometry with increasing Jux through the metabolic encyclopaedial treatment of bioprocesses is not satisfac-
network has no counterpart in chemistry. Also network tory anymore, and we will have to use a combination of
calculations will immediately challenge chemical engineer- textbooks (biochemistry, molecular biology, bioreactions,
ing students and will provide opportunities to use their bioseparations) to give an adequate fundamental education
knowledge of e.g. linear algebra on relevant problems. in biotechnology.
The treatment of kinetics of bioreactions in Chapters 6
and 9 is also to some extent disappointing and not up- John Villadsen
dated from Bailey and Ollis (1977 or 1986). Rates of Department of Biotechnology
bioreactions are best determined in steady-state contin- Technical University of Denmark
uous reactors and this should be introduced before the BioCentrum-DTU Building 223
stoichiometry in Chapter 7. Kinetics are also best ex- 2800 Lyngby, Denmark
tracted from steady-state datahence some material at E-mail address: john.villadsen@biocentrum.dtu.dk
the end of Chapter 6 should precede the batch data in the (J. Villadsen)