Immobilized Cells

Immobilized cells have been studied widely in the last few decades, and an enormous number of papers have been published on this topic. For many processes the complex physiology in a heterogeneous environment is now becoming clear. In addition it has been shown that in many processes it is more efficient to use immobilized cells than suspended cells. The contributions in this volume by scientists from various disciplines in academia, industry and research institutes cover the path from basic physiological research to actual application. One of the goals was to extract guidelines for characterizing immobilized cells in view of process design and application. It is important to recognize that research on immobilized metabolizing cells should eventually lead, whenever possible, to successful implementation of such catalysts in industrial processes, and so one of the aims of using these guidelines is to ensure that research is effective in achieving this objective. A structure was chosen in which general aspects of immobilization as well as kinetics and engineering aspects were covered. Besides laboratory methods, some simple calculation procedures have been presented in this lab manual. The combination of the practical methods with the calculations provide a tool for research with immobilized cells. Finally, the manual concludes with some recent promising and practical cases of immobilized cells as examples of potential applications.