Modeling of single cell protein production from cheese whey using tanks-in-series model

In this work, mathematical modeling of microbial (Trichosporon sp.) biomass production in a stirred tank bioreactor and in an external airlift bioreactor has been investigated. A model based on a tanks-in-series model without back-flow has been used to simulate the production of single cell protein in the external airlift bioreactor under an unsteady condition and without oxygen limitation, utilizing cheese whey as a substrate. The kinetic parameters of cell growth and substrate consumption including mm(maximum specific growth), Ks(growth associated parameter), g(saturated constant) and l(non growth associated parameter) were determined based on experimental data derived from the batch process in the stirred tank reactor and the kinetic model, which resulted in 0.59 h-1, 46.84 g/l, 0.383 and 1.275, respectively. Estimated biokinetic parameters were applied to find the profiles of biomass and lactose in the airlift bioreactor. MATLAB software was used to find kinetic parameters and solve the equations of the tanks-in-series model. The number of stages of the tanks-in-series obtained equals 16.