Modelling and Control of

bioprocesses
Part 1: Introduction
Research School IMCA
Cline Casenave
UMR INRA-SupAgro 0729 MISTEA, Montpellier France,
celine.casenave@supagro.inra.fr
September 2016

About INRA (http://www.inra.fr/)

French National Institute for Agricultural Research
Second largest public research institute in France
Europes top agricultural research institute
Worlds number two centre for the agricultural sciences
food
nutrition

agriculture
environment

1800 researchers
2500 engineers
4000 technicians and
administrative staff
2000 PhD students
17 regional research
centers, 250 laboratories
48 experimental units
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About my research unit

Division of Applied Mathematics and Informatics

Unit MISTEA: Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics for

Environment and Agriculture
GAMMA team
statistics - informatics

MOCAS team
dynamical systems - control
Agroecosystems
wine fermentation

water treatment
C. Casenave / Model and Control of bioproceses

Soil ecosystems
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Bioprocesses
What is it?
Bioprocess = process in which some biological systems
and/or living organisms are involved.
bacteria, yeast, enzyme, genetically modified crops, algae, etc.
Examples:
Fermentation: alcoholic (wine, beer), lactic (milk)
Waste water treatment (bioremediation)
Pharmaceutical drug production: insulin
Biofuel production
Bioleaching to obtain pure metal from the ores.

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Bioprocesses
Special features
no generic equation in biology
often of high dimension, in terms of number of variables,
processes, interactions
highly nonlinear
only a few measurements available, in terms of variables,
locations and time instants
uncertainties, on the model, parameters, and
measurements
saturation, often on the input
complex behaviors: (distributed) delays, feedbacks,
hysteresis, etc.

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Batch fermentation

Yeast biomass

Sugar

yeast X
nitrogen N
sugar S
ethanol E
k1 N X
X

CO2 production rate

assimilable N

= Study of yeast difficult in batch reactor

(because the fermentation process
is dynamic)

k2 S E + C02
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Case study: Wine fermentation

Multi-Stage Continuous Fermenter (MSCF)
= A tool for continuous study
dCO2/dt
(ml/min)

Flowmeter

Flowmeter

Flowmeter

Q1+ 1-Q2
Q1

Q1 + 1

Q3

Q2

Flowmeter

Q4 + 4

Q4

28C
S1
R
V1

R2
V2

R3
V3

R4
V4

At equilibrium:
8C

Synthetic media

Mimics the steps of the batch fermentation

The yeast are in stable physiological states

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Multi-Stage Continuous Fermenter (MSCF)
= A tool for continuous study

R1

R2

R3

R4

1-S/S0

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Comparison between fermentations in batch and
in the MSCF
International Journal of Food Microbiology 150 (2011) 4249

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Food Microbiology

journal homepage: w w w. els evier. c om/ loc ate/ ijf oodmic ro

Use of a continuous multistage bioreactor to mimic winemaking fermentation

T. Clement , M. Perez, J.R. Mouret, J.M. Sablayrolles, C. Camarasa
INRA, UMR Sciences pour l'nologie, 2 Place Viala, 34060 Montpellier cedex 1, France

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Comparison between fermentations in batch and
in the MSCF

Fig. 4. Fermentation performances and growth of the strains

EC118 during batch
fermentation and FSCF. Fermentation rate in batch fermentation () and in FSCF ();
yeast population, in batch fermentation ( ) and FSCF () obtained with the
strains
EC1118
on SM430 synthetic medium. X axis: fermentation
progress (S is the residual glucose concentration in the fermentation medium and S0 is
the initial content of glucose in the must).

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Comparison between fermentations in batch and
in the MSCF

Fig. 5. Nitrogen assimilation of the strains

EC118 during batch fermentation and FSCF. Total residual assimilable nitrogen (r.a.N) (, ) and ammonium (, ) as a function of
fermentation progress, in batch (closed symbols) and four-stage continuous fermentation (open symbols), with
EC1118 (b). The data are plotted versus the fermentation
progress (1 S/S0) where S is the residual glucose concentration in the fermentation medium and S0 is the initial content of glucose in the must.

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Problem: control of the MSCF

In each reactor:
Variable to be controlled:

the sugar concentration

Control input:

input flow

Online measurement:

C02 production rate

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Problem: control of the MSCF

In each reactor:
Variable to be controlled:

the sugar concentration

Control input:

input flow

Online measurement:

C02 production rate

Constraint

Qmax > Q1 > Q2 > Q3 > Q4 > 0

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Case study: Wine fermentation

Problem: control of the MSCF
Manual control:

= for one stem and fixed conditions (T C, media)

Objectives:
Automatic control of sugar concentration
Reduction of the response time
(compared to the manual control)
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Outline of the course

Part 1: Introduction and initiation to Python
Definition of a bioprocess, issues, presentation of the
case-study, basis of Python

Part 2: Modelling and simulation

Input/output and state representation, models of a reaction
scheme, of a bioreactor, and of an ecosystem, simulation in
Python

Part 3: Identification
identification issue, presentation of an identification
method, implementation in python

Part 4: Control
Definition of a control law, open/closed loop control,
observer, saturation, implementation in Python
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References
(1) Bastin G., Course Modelling and analysis of dynamical
systems (in French), UCL (Catholic University of Louvain),
Belgium
(2) Bastin G., Dochain D., On line estimation and adaptive
control of bioreactors
(http://perso.uclouvain.be/georges.bastin/)
(3) Coriou J.-P., Process Control: theory and applications,
Springer

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Internship opportunity in France

With me or my colleagues, on different subjects:
wine fermentation
blue green algae
and different problems:
modeling
simulation
control
Feel free to ask us
during the course
or after the course, by email:
celine.casenave@supagro.inra.fr
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