On-line estimation and control strategies for a microalgae fermentation continuous process

Abstract

The design of some adaptive and robust-adaptive control strategies for a microalgae fermentation process that is carried out inside a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) is presented. Initially, an indirect adaptive controller is designed by coupling a linearizing controller with a new parameter estimator used for estimation of unknown kinetics. Afterwards, under the realistic assumption that the reaction kinetics are unknown, time-varying and moreover the influent flow rate is uncertain and time-varying, but some lower and upper bounds of these uncertainties are known, two robust-adaptive control structures are proposed by combining a linearizing control law with two new appropriately parameter estimators able to estimates the unknown reaction rates. Numerical simulations are included to validate the designed controllers applied to a continuous fermentation bioprocess used for microalgae production.