Enhanced polyhydroxyalkanoate production from organic wastes via process control

This work explores the use of a model-based control scheme to enhance the productivity of polyhroxyalkanoate (PHA) production in a mixed culture two-stage system fed with synthetic wastewater. The controller supplies pulses of substrate while regulating the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration and uses the data to fit a dynamic mathematical model, which in turn is used to predict the time until the next pulse addition. Experiments in a bench scale system first determined the optimal DO set-point and initial substrate concentration. Then the proposed feedback control strategy was compared with a simpler empiric algorithm. The results show that a substrate conversion rate of 1.370 ± 0.598 mgPHA/mgCOD/d was achieved. The proposed strategy can also indicate when to stop the accumulation of PHA upon saturation, which occurred with a PHA content of 71.0 ± 7.2 wt.%.