Experimental validation of online monitoring and optimization strategies applied to a biohydrogen production dark fermenter

Abstract This work presents the proposal and experimental validation of an online optimization strategy for maximizing the hydrogen production rate (HPR) in an anaerobic bioreactor through the dark fermentation of glucose. The proposal comprises a heuristic optimization strategy, a coupled nonlinear observer, and a PI controller to track the desired maximum HPR. The optimization is achieved by solving online a nonlinear programming problem which considers the relation between the HPR and the organic loading rate (OLR), such that the latter is manipulated to maximize the former. Since the OLR requires online knowledge of the unmeasured influent substrate concentration, the nonlinear observer is used to estimate it using measurements of the hydrogen flow rate at the output of the bioreactor. This observer comprises the coupled operation of a robust Luenberger observer and a super-twisting observer. The proposal was designed and tested experimentally in a continuous stirred tank laboratory bioreactor fed with glucose, and the results are very promising.

[1]  Debabrata Das,et al.  Hydrogen production by biological processes: a survey of literature , 2001 .

[2]  Georges Bastin,et al.  Identification of reaction networks for bioprocesses: determination of a partially unknown pseudo-stoichiometric matrix , 2005, Bioprocess and biosystems engineering (Print).

[3]  I. Zúñiga,et al.  On-line heuristic optimization strategy to maximize the hydrogen production rate in a continuous stirred tank reactor , 2015 .

[4]  Harvey M. Wagner,et al.  Global Sensitivity Analysis , 1995, Oper. Res..

[5]  Jo-Shu Chang,et al.  Fermentative hydrogen production from wastewaters: A review and prognosis , 2012 .

[6]  É. Latrille,et al.  Robust observation strategy to estimate the substrate concentration in the influent of a fermentative bioreactor for hydrogen production , 2015 .

[7]  Bruce E Logan,et al.  Extracting hydrogen and electricity from renewable resources. , 2004, Environmental science & technology.

[8]  Jean-Philippe Steyer,et al.  Optimal control of hydrogen production in a continuous anaerobic fermentation bioreactor , 2010 .

[9]  M. E. Naggar,et al.  Effect of organic loading on a novel hydrogen bioreactor , 2010 .

[11]  P. Gahinet,et al.  A linear matrix inequality approach to H∞ control , 1994 .

[12]  F. Kargı,et al.  Bio-hydrogen production from waste materials , 2006 .

[13]  Stephen J. Wright,et al.  Numerical Optimization , 2018, Fundamental Statistical Inference.

[14]  Jean-Philippe Steyer,et al.  A pseudo-stoichiometric dynamic model of anaerobic hydrogen production from molasses. , 2008, Water research.

[15]  Lawrence Pitt,et al.  Biohydrogen production: prospects and limitations to practical application , 2004 .

[16]  C. Larroche,et al.  Multiscale mixing analysis and modeling of biohydrogen production by dark fermentation , 2016 .

[17]  Germán Buitrón,et al.  Biohydrogen production from Tequila vinasses in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor: effect of initial substrate concentration, temperature and hydraulic retention time. , 2010, Bioresource technology.

[18]  Pascal Gahinet,et al.  H/sub /spl infin// design with pole placement constraints: an LMI approach , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 33rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[19]  J. Daafouz,et al.  Output feedback disk pole assignment for systems with positive real uncertainty , 1996, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control..

[20]  Christopher Edwards,et al.  Sliding Mode Control and Observation , 2013 .

[21]  Steven N. Liss,et al.  Effect of organic loading rate on fermentative hydrogen production from continuous stirred tank and membrane bioreactors , 2009 .

[22]  Jianlong Wang,et al.  FACTORS INFLUENCING FERMENTATIVE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION: A REVIEW , 2009 .

[23]  F. Smith,et al.  COLORIMETRIC METHOD FOR DETER-MINATION OF SUGAR AND RELATED SUBSTANCE , 1956 .

[24]  Sang-Eun Oh,et al.  Biohydrogen gas production from food processing and domestic wastewaters , 2005 .