A simple well-performing adaptive control technique for pH control in fermentations of recombinant protein production processes
is described and its design procedure is explained. First, the entire control algorithm was simulated and parameterized. Afterwards
it was tested in real cultivation processes. The results show that this simple technique leads to significant reductions in
the fluctuations of the pH values in microbial cultures at a minimum of expenditures. The signal-to-noise ratio and thus the
information captured by the pH signal were increased by about an order of magnitude. This leads to a substantial improvement
in the noise of many other process signals that are used to monitor and control the process. For instance, respiratory off-gas
data of CO
2 and its derived carbon dioxide production rate signals from the cultures carry much less noise as compared to those values
obtained with conventional pH control. Detailed process analysis revealed that even very small pH jumps of 0.03 values during
the fermentation were shown to result in pronounced deflections in CO
2-volume fraction of 8% (peak to peak). The proposed controller, maintaining the pH within the interval of 0.01 around the
setpoint, reduces the noise considerably.
Keywords pH control - CO2
- Bicarbonate - Gain scheduling - Fermentation