Scaling Fermentation

Scaling CBG Through Fermentation

Today, the team at Demetrix is excited to announce that we’ve commenced 15,000 liter demo scale production runs of our first rare cannabinoid, CBG. This is an important milestone on our way to achieving mass scale commercial production of rare cannabinoids, and is an important step forward in our mission to make the world a better place with science.

We’ve had a few questions about how we’re approaching our fermentation milestones, so we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify what we mean when we’re talking about bench scale, pilot scale, demo scale, and commercial scale production.

Types of Fermentation Scale Milestones

Bench Scale: We consider anything up to 100 liters to be a bench scale production run.  Generally, this is where we test our hypotheses, and much of our upstream (USP) and downstream (DSP) processing innovation happens here. While bench scale production helps us conduct quick iterations in process engineering, it can’t provide key insights into whether these processes will work at commercial scale. 

Pilot Scale: We consider production runs up to several 1,000 liters to be pilot scale. This is where we begin to stress test our USP and DSP to determine if they hold up under different physical variables that come from larger scales, like oxygen and heat transfer rates.  This is often where our bench-scale process, especially for DSP, requires further optimization in order to translate to at-scale production. Optimizations are conducted at pilot-scale or we go back down to bench scale and apply what we learned. We repeat this process until we get it right.

Demo Scale: We consider demo scale to be at least 10,000 liters. Once we have confidence that our DSP and USP will scale further, we move to demo scale. We use demo scale to be able to accurately simulate what it will be like to produce products at mass commercial scale. Demo scale helps us confirm we have control of our product specifications and product quality (e.g. purity, color). It also  allows us to validate what our cost of goods will be at commercial scale. 

Commercial Scale: This is mass scale production that allows us to manufacture and sell our ingredients using a proven, consistent process. And while we’re able to bring a product to market at this point, we’re still working behind the scenes to design new processes at bench, pilot, and demo scale to optimize what’s happening at the commercial scale. It’s an ongoing cyclical process. 

Interested in learning more about Demetrix’s mission to make the world a better place through science, and our fermentation technology platform?  Visit us at www.demetrix.com , or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

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