Thanks to advances in sensor development it is now possible to have deep, continuous insight into important (local) reaction parameters. Not only temperature and pressure, but also the quality of the input raw materials, concentrations of various reaction products and the health state of the micro-organism.
Data is data, until you deeply understand it – it then becomes a force for building robust, reliable processes
Marieke Klijn
Within the Zero Emission Biotechnology research programme, my group develops the infrastructure and tools that use these data for optimising process conditions and building automated process control systems. One of the biggest challenges we hope to address is to make much more use of continuous processing. This can bring a large efficiency gain over batch processing, but it requires (near) real-time monitoring and control of many different parameters. In collaboration with Rinke van Tatenhove-Pel in Industrial Microbiology, we explore the impact of continuous monitoring and control for promising sustainable co-culture processes.