“…The process parameters considered for model input were biomass concentration, superficial air velocity, specific power, and oxygen-vector volumetric fraction, and the output was the mass transfer coefficient. The algorithm, called SADE-NN-1, represents an improved version of SADE-NN proposed in Dragoi et al (2012a), the alteration consisting in the introduction of the following elements: (i) OBL to improve initialization, (ii) a new mutation strategy in order to improve the offspring generation, and (iii) increasing the number of activation functions that a neuron could have during the evolution (linear, hard limit, bipolar sigmoid, logistic sigmoid, tangent sigmoid, sinus, radial basis, and triangular basis functions). Simple ANNs, with one hidden layer and small number of intermediate neurons, accurately model the process considered as case study.…”