On‐line estimation of microbial specific growth‐rates: An illustrative case study

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Abstract
This paper deals with the on‐line estimation of the specific growth rate in a fermentation process in the case when a soluble product is measured on‐line. The proposed algorithm belongs to a larger class of on‐line estimation algorithms which present the following advantages: they do not require any analytical expressions for the specific growth rate; their theoretical stability and convergence have been emphasized; since their structure includes a filtering effect, the estimation results exhibit less erratic values for the specific growth rate than when obtained by direct calculation from the biomass concentration equation. Real‐life results on an ethanol producing process are presented. Finally. it is shown how estimation results can be used for modelling purposes.