Determination of feeding rate ratio in coupled fed-batch fermentation with pH feedback considering limited number of switches

Abstract

This paper focuses on binary optimal control of fed-batch fermentation of glycerol by Klebsiella pneumoniae with pH feedback considering limited number of switches. To maximize the concentration of 1,3-propanediol at terminal time, we propose a binary optimal control problem subjected to time-coupled combinatorial constraint with the ratio of feeding rate of glycerol to that of NaOH as control variables. Based on time-scaling transformation and discretization, the binary optimal control problem is first transformed into a mixed binary parameter optimization problem consisting not only continuous variables but also binary variables, which is then divided into two subproblems via combinatorial integral approximation decomposition. Finally, a novel fruit fly optimizer with modified sine cosine algorithm and adaptive maximum dwell rounding are applied to solve the obtained subproblems numerically. Numerical results show the rationality and feasibility of the proposed method.