Noninferior periodic operation of the metabolite producing biological reactor

The optimal periodic operation of the biological reactor in which the metabolites belonging to Type I or II in Gaden's classification are produced was investigated from the viewpoint of the multiobjective programming problem. In addition to the productivity of the desired product, its concentration and the conversion of the substrate which have a large influence on the performance of the separation process following the fermentation process were adopted as the objective functions. The growth of cells was assumed to be inhibited both by the substrate and the product, and the Luedeking-Piret model was employed for the specific production rate. The optimal periodic operation was determined by use of the optimization method due to Miele. It was clarified that the noninferior set for the periodic operation was generally composed of the repeated batch portion and the repeated fed-batch one.