TITLE:
Using Magnetic Nanoparticles to Eliminate Oscillations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Fermentation Processes
AUTHORS:
Lakshmi N. Sridhar
KEYWORDS:
Nanoparticles; Fermentation; Oscillations
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Sustainable Bioenergy Systems,
Vol.2 No.3,
September
25,
2012
ABSTRACT: This article provides computational evidence to show that functionalized magnetic nanoparticles can eliminate the wasteful oscillatory behavior in fermentation processes involving Saccharomyces cerevisiae. There has been a consi-derable amount of work demonstrating the existence of oscillations in fermentation processes. Recently Reference [1] computationally demonstrated very simple strategies to eliminate the oscillations in the fermentation process. In the case of the of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation process it was shown that the addition of a little bit of oxygen would be successful in eliminating the oscillation causing Hopf bifurcations. The work of [2,3] demonstrated that oxygen mass transfer could be enhanced by using functionalized magnetic nanoparticles. The aim of this work is to incorporate the model used by [3] regarding the enhancement of oxygen mass transfer in the cybernetic Jones Kompala model [4] describing the dynamics of the Saccharomnyces cerevisiae fermentation process and demonstrate that using the functionalized magnetic nanoparticles can by altering the mass transfer coefficient actually succeed in eliminating the oscillatory behavior that plagues the Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation process. This occurs because the oscillation causing Hopf bifurcations are sensitive to the amount of input oxygen and increasing the oxygen mass transfer coefficient causes the disappearance of the Hopf bifurcation points.