The moderate thermophilic mix culture bacteria were used to depyritize the Illinois coal of varying particle sizes (-100 μm, 100-200 μm, +200 μm). Mineral libration analysis showed the presence of pyrite along with other minerals in coal. Microbial depyritization of coal was carried out in stirred tank batch reactors in presence of an iron-free 9K medium. The results indicate that microbial depyritization of coal using moderate thermophiles is an efficient process. Moreover, particle size of coal is an important parameter which affects the efficiency of microbial depyritization process. At the end of the experiment, a maximum of 75% pyrite and 66% of pyritic sulphur were removed from the median particle size. The XRD analysis showed the absence of pyrite mineral in the treated coal sample. A good mass balance was also obtained with net loss of mass ranging from 5-9% showing the feasibility of the process for large scale applications.
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Biosynthesis of lovastatin (a polyketide metabolite of Aspergillus terreus) in bioreactors of different working volume was studied to indicate how the change of scale of the process influences the formation of this metabolite. The experiments conducted in shake flasks of 150 ml working volume allowed to obtain lovastatin titres at the level of 87.5 mg LOV l-1, when two carbon sources, namely lactose and glycerol were used. The application of the same components in a large stirred-tank bioreactor of 5.3-litre working volume caused a decrease of lovastatin production by 87% compared to the shake flask culture. The deficiency of nitrogen in this bioreactor did not favour the formation of lovastatin, in contrast to the small bioreactor of 1.95-litre working volume, in which lovastatin titres comparable to those in the shake flasks could be achieved, when organic nitrogen concentration was two-fold decreased. When the control of pH and/or pO2 was used simultaneously, an increase in lovastatin production was observed in the bioreactors. However, these results were still slightly lower than lovastatin titres obtained in the shake flasks.