based strategies to enhance cellulase enzyme production from trichoderma reesei in bioreactor culture conditions

Cellulases are industrially important enzymes that are sold in large volumes for use in different industrial applications for example in starch processing, animal feed production, grain alcohol fermentation, malting and brewing, extraction of fruit and vegetable juices, pulp and paper industry and textile industry. Filamentous fungi Trichoderma reesei are considered to be one of the most efficient hyper producers of cellulase. Cellulase production by T.reesei was carried out using high concentration of cellulose substitute glucose with the aim to improve cellulase production while trying to reduce production costs. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to evaluate the effects of fermentation parameters for cellulase production by T.reesei. Temperature, cellulose concentration, inducer (lactose) concentration, pH, inoculum age and agitation rate were optimized using filter paper activity (FPA) as response. Cellulose concentration and inducer lactose concentration were significant factors in the fermentation. The steepest ascent method was used to locate the optimal domain and a central composite design was used to estimate the quadratic response surface from which the factor levels for maximum production of cellulase were determined. The final optimum values of the operating parameters predicted by RSM were temperature 28°C, cellulose 80 mg/mL, inducer lactose 55 mg/mL, pH 4.0, inoculum age 5 days and agitation 220 rpm. A highly significant quadratic polynomial obtained by Central Composite Design (CCD) was very useful for determining the optimal process parameter values of fermentation process that have significant effects on cellulase production. The successful use of cellulosic materials as renewable carbon sources is dependent on the development of economically feasible processes for cellulase production and enzymatic hyrolysis of cellulosic materials to lower molecular weight products such as hexose and pentose. The results of stirred tank bioreactor with different media composition exhibited the economical and technical advantages of enzyme production process using mixtures of cellulose and lactose as carbon sources.