Recently, HOLVES officially entered into a partnership with the Sustainable Food Processing Laboratory at the Institute of Food, Nutrition, and Health at ETH Zurich, a world-leading institution. A fully equipped 7L-Twin220 laboratory parallel fermenter has been put into operation at the laboratory. It will be used for the efficient parallel cultivation of microalgae, bacteria, and other functional cells.
 

 

The Sustainable Food Processing Laboratory at ETH Zurich has long focused on microalgal protein and novel biorefining technologies. Heterotrophic fermentation of microalgae is one of the team’s core research areas, but researchers face a practical challenge: the efficiency of optimizing cultivation conditions is too low.

With traditional single-vessel fermentation, only one set of conditions can be tested at a time. If you want to compare the effects of different carbon sources, pH levels, or temperatures on algal cell growth, the experimental cycle would be extended indefinitely; parallel fermentation is the standard approach to solving this problem.
The design goal of the Twin220 is precisely to make this “parallel comparison” simple, reliable, and repeatable.
 
 

For ETH Labs, Twin220 addresses the challenge of conducting more comparative experiments in less time.
 

1. 7L Total Volume: Designed to meet the medium-throughput research needs of ETH laboratories, it ensures sufficient biomass for downstream protein analysis while controlling media and reagent consumption.
2. Independent Control of Two Vessels: The two vessels can operate simultaneously under different parameters. By initiating comparative experiments on the same day, preliminary growth differences can be observed within a few hours, significantly shortening the process optimization cycle.
3. Robust Key Configuration: A Siemens control system, high-precision peristaltic pumps, the H-Mix® stirring system, and the Feed-Sup® intelligent feeding strategy—these features collectively ensure the comparability of data from both vessels.
4. Complete and Traceable Data: The Meta-Tri® audit trail function and the HF-Control V2.2 control system record operations in real time and generate growth curves, meeting requirements for data integrity.

According to feedback from the ETH Lab, the Twin220 outperformed expectations in parallel experiments, significantly shortening the team’s process optimization cycle. Lab researchers noted that the device operates stably, has a clear operating procedure, and requires virtually no learning curve, allowing it to be put into formal experiments shortly after unboxing.
The future of microalgal protein ultimately hinges on a series of precise comparative experiments. 7 liters, two tanks running in parallel. While this scale is insignificant in the context of industrial fermentation, in the ETH lab, it represents the shortest path from “hypothesis” to “conclusion.”
Fermenters won’t change the world. But the data generated by fermenters will!
 
*Image source: ETH Zurich website