Estimation of microalgal photobioreactor production based on total inorganic carbon in the medium

Microalgae biotechnology has been focusing on the use of algae in the production of high value compounds. During the last few decades, the intense research effort has been aiming at improving new controls and supervising tools as well as on a good process understanding. This requirement involves a large diversity and a better accessibility to process measurements. Probes or sensors are required to control the process. They are however relatively limited. Classical photobioreactors are usually equipped with temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH probes. These sensors actually provide very little online information on cell growth, viability, metabolic state and production. For the time being, sensors reliability cannot meet industrial bioprocessing requirements. In this context software sensors show numerous potentialities. The central axis of this work is the development of an extended Kalman filter (EKF) for the estimation of biomass concentration based on a dynamic process model in combination with total inorganic carbon measurement. A microalga Porphyridium purpureum was used as a model organism in this study. Numerical simulations and real-life experiments (batch and continuous mode) have been carried out and corresponding results are given in order to highlight the performance of the proposed estimator.

[1]  D. Dochain,et al.  On-Line Estimation and Adaptive Control of Bioreactors , 2013 .

[2]  E. Grima,et al.  Prediction of dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration profiles in tubular photobioreactors for microalgal culture , 1999, Biotechnology and bioengineering.

[3]  Arsène Isambert,et al.  Modelling of a continuous pilot photobioreactor for microalgae production , 1999 .

[4]  Eugénio C. Ferreira,et al.  A study on the convergence of observer-based kinetics estimators in stirred tank bioreactors , 1996 .

[5]  Y. Chisti.  Biodiesel from microalgae. , 2007, Biotechnology advances.

[6]  Antoine Krystallidis.  Application du génie des procédés aux biotechnologies marines : étude de faisabilité, modélisation et simulation dynamique d'un procédé de culture de microalgues , 1994 .

[7]  Y. Chisti,et al.  Steady-state axial profiles of dissolved oxygen in tall bubble column bioreactors , 1999 .

[8]  Janet R. Stein-Taylor.  Culture methods and growth measurements , 1973 .

[9]  Masoud Soroush.  State and parameter estimations and their applications in process control , 1998 .

[10]  Kazuyuki Shimizu,et al.  A tutorial review on bioprocess systems engineering , 1996 .

[11]  Jean-François Cornet,et al.  A gas phase chromatography method for determination of low dissolved CO2 concentration and/or CO2 solubility in microbial culture media , 1995 .

[12]  Olivier Bernard,et al.  A non-linear software sensor to monitor the internal nitrogen quota of phytoplanktonic cells , 2001 .

[13]  Y. Chisti,et al.  Airlift-driven external-loop tubular photobioreactors for outdoor production of microalgae: assessment of design and performance , 2001 .

[14]  John R. Benemann,et al.  CO2 mitigation with microalgae systems , 1997 .

[15]  Patrick C. Hallenbeck,et al.  Biological hydrogen production; fundamentals and limiting processes , 2002 .