A bioprocess is composed mainly of three stages&mdash;upstream processing, bioreaction, and downstream processing&mdash;to convert raw material to finished product.
The raw material can be of biological or non-biological origin. It is first converted to a more suitable form for processing. This is done in an upstream processing step which involves chemical hydrolysis, preparation of liquid medium, separation of particulate, air purification and many other preparatory operations.
After the upstream processing step, the resulting feed is transferred to one or more bioreaction stages. The biochemical reactors or bioreactors form the base of the bioreaction step. This step mainly consists of three operations, namely, production of biomass, metabolite biosynthesis and biotransformation.
Finally, the material produced in the bioreactor must be further processed in the downstream section to convert it into a more useful form. The downstream process mainly consists of physical separation operations which include solid liquid separation, adsorption, liquid-liquid extraction, distillation, drying etc.