THE ICI SINGLE CELL PROTEIN PROCESS

Abstract

The Agricultural Division of ICI has as its main customer the farming industry, and the work which I shall describe has been derived from an intensive research effort aimed at the provision of a new source of protein quality comparable with fishmeal. While the demand fer fishmeal and other high quality proteins continues to rise it is clear that there will be no increase in the yield of fish from the world's seas. This has meant that many groups have turned to the growth of micro-organisms as protein sources grown on substrates varying from vegetable matter to n-alkanes, but basically attempting to replace hunting by manufacture, and allowing the use of the kind of large scale continuous technology developed by the chemical industry. The single cell protein processes have, of course, the additional advantages of low land requirement and independence of the weather.