RESEARCH ARTICLE

Decoding cultured meat manufacturing: a full process model to identify scale-up bottlenecks.

Frontiers in nutrition · 10 August 2026 · DOI 10.3389/fnut.2026.1844185

Researchers built a SuperPro Designer model of batch-grown animal cells for unstructured cultivated meat biomass. The flowsheet covered medium preparation, stepwise suspension culture in stirred tanks up to 20,000 litres, biomass separation and rinsing, extrusion, and utility use, with parameters drawn from mammalian cell-culture literature. At an assumed peak density of 50 million cells per millilitre, one 30.7-day run produced about 2,000 kg. Key constraints included expansion performance, medium sterilisation, cleaning, cooling, and the substantial time, waste, and utility requirements of scale-out.