With the current pressing need to rise to the ambition of net zero targets to mitigate carbon emissions and climate change impacts, sustainable processing has never been more critical. Bioprocessing has all the desirable attributes to respond to the sustainable processing challenge: use of cheap, renewable resources, nature-inspired, highly selective biocatalysts operating optimally under mild conditions and reduced energy consumption/carbon footprint. With bioprocessing productivity being far from ideal to meet the large-scale need for food, drugs, biofuels and bio-based chemicals, there has been tremendous interest of late in developing intensified bioprocesses, with significant advancement achieved in tailoring and utilising the technologies in the toolbox traditionally applied in chemical process intensification.

This review highlights the wide range of activities currently on-going in bioprocess intensification, focusing on upstream, bioreactor/fermentation and downstream separation steps. Great strides have been made in biocatalyst engineering and high density cell immobilisation for significant productivity enhancement, which, in conjunction with elegant process innovations such as novel bioreactor technologies and in-situ product separations, are enabling bioprocesses to become more competitive than ever before. The future prospects of bioprocess intensification are promising but there are still challenges that need to be overcome to fully exploit this technology.

由于当前迫切需要实现减少碳排放和气候变化影响的净零目标，可持续加工从未像现在这样重要。生物加工具有应对可持续加工挑战的所有理想属性：使用廉价的可再生资源、受自然启发的高选择性生物催化剂在温和条件下以最佳方式运行以及减少能源消耗/碳足迹。由于生物加工生产力远不能满足对食品、药物、生物燃料和生物基化学品的大规模需求，近来人们对开发强化生物工艺产生了极大的兴趣，在定制和利用这些技术方面取得了重大进展。传统上应用于化学过程强化的工具箱。

本综述重点介绍了目前生物过程强化中正在进行的广泛活动，重点关注上游、生物反应器/发酵和下游分离步骤。在生物催化剂工程和高密度细胞固定化方面取得了长足的进步，显着提高了生产力，再加上新颖的生物反应器技术和原位产品分离等优雅的工艺创新，使生物工艺变得比以往任何时候都更具竞争力。生物工艺强化的未来前景广阔，但仍需克服挑战以充分利用该技术。