Simulação e validação de processo de fermentação alcoólica e desenvolvimento de banco de dados para bioprocessos em simulador de processos (SimCentral/AVEVA).

Abstract

Bioreactors are biological reactors in which a series of biochemical transformations occur. These transformations are catalyzed by enzymes or living cells. The operation of the bioreactor is based on the kinetics process and fluid dynamics of the system. In view of the complexity of the biological system and in order to integrate the practical study with industrial technologies, the objective of this work is the development of a database in the SimCentral/AVEVA simulator focused on bioprocesses and simulate through phenomenological models the process of alcoholic fermentation in Batelada reactor, with the purpose of structuring them to be applied to the SimCentral/AVEVA simulator. In view of the complexity of the biological system, and in order to integrate the practical study with industrial technologies, the objective of this work is the development of a database in the SimCentral/AVEVA simulator related to bioprocesses.The objective was also to perform the simulation of the alcoholic fermentation process in a Batch reactor, through phenomenological models, in order to structure them to be applied later to the SimCentral / AVEVA simulator. This work was developed at the Laboratory of Numerical Process Experimentation (LENP/ IRIDIUM) at UFCG in partnership with the Laboratory of Alcoholic Beverages (LBA) at UFPB and the company AVEVA (Industrial Software Solutions). The typical component of this process is glucose, which was inserted into the SimCentral simulator, through the SC Thermo Data (internal database function), accompanied by its thermodynamic and transport properties. For this, Aspen Plus was used as a reference simulator. A regression was performed for the temperature-dependent properties that were validated in MATLAB. Hence, the correlation constants were found to be inserted in the SimCentral equations. In relation to the experimental data, batch kinetics was made for the sugarcane must, being monitored the pH, temperature, biomass growth, soluble solids, alcohol content and glucose consumption (through the DNS curve) in triplicate. A slower fermentation type, such as beer, was also evaluated through the parameters found in the literature by Gee (1988). The mathematical model applied to simulate the process was based on the Monod empirical equation. As a result, when inserting the glucose component, it was successful with all its chemical and thermophysical characteristics. It was observed a strong influence of temperature on properties such as vapor pressure, enthalpy, vaporization heat, surface tension, density, among others, evaluated in this study, with a coefficient of determination between 0.97 and 1. The phenomenological model studied obtained RSD (Residual Standard Deviation) values of 6.38% for cell growth and 19.53 and 22.48% for glucose consumption and ethanol production, respectively. These values indicate how much the model is able to predict the behavior of the actual process. The entire structure studied and analyzed in this work is ready to be simulated in SimCentral (in Model Writing) as a continuation of what has been done so far.