untangle.bio
Downstream process designBuilt for biotech engineers

Separate
the broth.
Rank the
routes.

Define a feed — or ferment it first. The generator lays out every viable downstream train, prices each one, and reports yield, purity, COGS and minimum selling price, streaming results as it finds them.

Try it free → no install · runs in the browser
52
unit operations
Any
molecule you can run
NPV
IRR · payback · MSP per route
Fig. 1 — Lysozyme · fermentation broth separating
Route
#12 / 8,412
Yield
100.0%
Purity
14.0%
CAPEX
$12.3M
Fig. 2 — Generated route · Lysozyme DSP route #12 / 8,412 · drag →
Yield87.4%
Purity96.2%
CAPEX$12.3M
Feed
Lysozyme · HCP
salts · debris
120 L/hr
Centrifuge
UF 10k
IEX
Spray dry
Lysozyme
Waste
Waste
01
Route generation

Thousands of processes, ranked

A diversity-preserving genetic search proposes downstream trains; a rules engine drops the ones that would never run in a plant.

Ranked, not just generated

Every candidate scored on recovery, purity and installed cost. Sort or filter on any of them.

  • Genetic search tuned for breadth over one optimum
  • 44 engineering constraints reject infeasible trains
  • Filter by selectivity, concentration or economics
  • Streaming output, routes land as found
01Centrifuge → UF 10k → IEX → Spray dry94
02Disc centrifuge → MF → Affinity → Freeze dry88
03Depth filter → UF 30k → SEC → Spray dry82
04Centrifuge → NF → IEX → Vacuum tray77
05Microfiltration → UF 10k → RP-HPLC71
02
Fermentation

Ferment first, then separate

The bioreactor is a dynamic Monod/OTR integrator, not a yield spreadsheet: growth, oxygen transfer, heat duty and titer come out of the kinetics, hour by hour.

Broth in, physics out

Pick an organism from the library or set your own kinetics. The broth the fermenter produces is the real feed the downstream search starts from.

  • Batch, fed-batch, chemostat, perfusion and air-lift
  • Oxygen-transfer limit and cooling duty resolved in time
  • Fed-batch feed is a declared, billed inlet
  • Multi-product broths with per-product yields and titers
t=0Inoculate · Monod growthDCW ↑
t+8hOxygen transfer limits (kLa)OTR
t+16hFed-batch feed startsfeed
t+36hHarvest at peak productivitytiter
Broth → downstream feedDSP
03
Techno-economics

Investor-grade numbers on every option

An industry-standard capital ladder with per-item installation, itemised operating cost, and a year-by-year cash flow behind every headline number — benchmarked against a 50-paper corpus of published TEAs.

Price it before you build it

Capital · DFC ladder
Equipment purchase$7,020,000
Installation + facility build-up$5,280,000
Direct fixed capital$12,300,000
Cash flow · 15 yr
COGS$8.40 / kg
NPV @ 10% · IRR$6.1M · 18%
Minimum selling price$11.20 / kg
Illustrative summary · not the full model

Defensible, not just detailed

One economic basis feeds every tier. NPV, IRR, payback and MSP come from the same year-by-year schedule, so NPV at the MSP is zero by construction.

  • 52 operations with industry cost curves
  • Conservative scaling exponents, by house rule
  • Facility grade and labor profiles per region
  • Printable dossier with AACE class band and assumptions register
04
The workspace

Everything in one place

A

Any molecule

300+ curated molecules with full properties (MW, pKa, solubility, pI, diffusion), or define your own. Run essentially anything.

B

Live mass balance

Stream-level concentrations, flow and pH update as you build the train — and the plant boundary closes to under 1%.

C

Multi-product trains

Co-purify several targets with branching outlets and per-product yields and titers.

D

Expert rules

44 constraints block infeasible designs: chromatography prereqs, fouling, drying order — and models refuse rather than guess when data is missing.

E

3D trade-off plot

Every route in yield × purity × CAPEX space. Pick the corner you want to live in.

F

The dossier

A printable report: AACE class band, MSP headline, capital ladder, itemised opex, year-by-year cash flow, assumptions register and warnings.

G

Ask your AI

untangle ships an MCP server — generate routes, run fermentations and pull TEAs straight from Claude or any MCP-capable assistant.

05
The method

Three moves

1

Define the feed

Flow, pH and components — or simulate the fermentation and start from the broth it actually makes.

2

Generate routes

Set yield and purity targets, then explore thousands of priced downstream sequences.

3

Pick, price, export

Compare by yield, purity, COGS and MSP. Drop the winner onto the canvas and print the dossier.

Point it at your
hardest separation.

no install · no spreadsheets · runs in the browser

Open the app →