Bioprocessing 4.0 in biomanufacturing: paving the way for sustainable bioeconomy

Abstract

The past decade has been envisaged as a period of unprecedented growth and development in the bioprocessing industry due to the increasing prominence of manufacturing bioproducts encompassing day-to-day life. Bioprocesses are the heart of biotechnology and represent the most dynamic constituent for conceptualizing the bioeconomy as it has the potential to tackle the most burgeoning problems such as climatic adversity, global population growth, reduced ecosystem resilience. The promising amalgamation of digitalization, biologicalization, and biomanufacturing paved the way for an emerging concept of “bio-intelligent value addition” or more prominently Bioprocessing 4.0 that enables the transformation in the landscape of biomanufacturing. Despite its positive credentials, the technology is facing technical, organizational, economical, and likely some unforeseen challenges that must be resolved for its successful implementation for hailing the sustainability development goals (SDGs) of bioeconomy. Though the road of bioeconomy is quite arduous, the continuous demand for bioproducts and their timely delivery at a faster rate necessitates the culture of sharing knowledge, digitalization, automation, and development of flexible modular and podular facility footprints to accelerate biomanufacturing. Therefore, it is worth summarizing the major portfolios of Bioprocessing 4.0 such as conception of biofoundry, bioprocess intensification strategies, process and data analytics, software and automation, and its synergistic correlation with bioeconomy. Thus, the present article advocates about the technological glance of Bioprocessing 4.0 along with technical challenges and future research priorities for sparking the glory of this industrial landscape for enshrining the bioeconomy.