Control of a yeast fermentation bioreactor Using model predictive control based on radial basis function network modeling

Abstract

The control of a continuously operated fermenter at its maximum productivity level gives rise to a difficult control problem as the location of the optimum operating point changes due to the disturbances. The nonlinearity of the continuous yeast fermentation reactor and the large number of variables, which have to be determined experimentally means that it is not easy to design a controller that will enforce a high productivity. This paper proposes a simple model of the yeast fermentation bioreactor based on the radial basis function(RBF) network, the proposed model used with a model predictive control (MPC) algorithm resulting in a highly control strategy that can improve the productivity of the yeast fermentation process.