Kinetic Modeling and Parameter Estimation in a Tower Bioreactor for Bioethanol Production.

Elmer Ccopa Rivera; Aline da Costa; Betânia Lunelli; Maria Maciel; Rubens Filho

Abstract  In this work, a systematic method to support the building of bioprocess models through the use of different optimization techniques is presented. The method was applied to a tower bioreactor for bioethanol production with immobilized cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Specifically, a step-by-step procedure to the estimation problem is proposed. As the first step, the potential of global searching of real-coded genetic algorithm (RGA) was applied for simultaneous estimation of the parameters. Subsequently, the most significant parameters were identified using the Placket–Burman (PB) design. Finally, the quasi-Newton algorithm (QN) was used for optimization of the most significant parameters, near the global optimum region, as the initial values were already determined by the RGA global-searching algorithm. The results have shown that the performance of the estimation procedure applied in a deterministic detailed model to describe the experimental data is improved using the proposed method (RGA–PB–QN) in comparison with a model whose parameters were only optimized by RGA.

ETHANOL as fuel; SACCHAROMYCES cerevisiae; GENETIC algorithms; ESTIMATION theory

Applied Biochemistry & Biotechnology, 2008, Vol 148, Issue 1-3, p163

0273-2289

Academic Journal

10.1007/s12010-007-8062-6