Design of a general architecture for the integration of process engineering simulation and computational fluid dynamics

Imperial Users onl

Meteorological Data-Based Optimal Control Strategy for Microalgae Cultivation in Open Pond Systems

Outdoor biofuel production from microalgae is a complex dynamical process submitted to climatic variations. Controlling and optimizing such a nonlinear process strongly influenced by weather conditions is therefore tricky, but it is crucial to make this process economically sustainable. The strategy investigated in this study uses weather forecast coupled to a detailed predictive model of algal productivity for online optimization of the rates of fresh medium injection and culture removal into and from the pond. This optimization strategy was applied at various climatic conditions and significantly increased productivity compared to a standard operation with constant pond depth and dilution rate, by up to a factor of 2.2 in a Mediterranean climate in summer. A thorough analysis of the optimizer strategy revealed that the increase of productivity in summer was achieved by finding a trade-off between algal concentration to optimally distribute light and pond temperature to get closer to optimal growth temperature. This study also revealed that maintaining the temperature as high as possible is the best strategy to maximize productivity in cold climatic conditions

Accelerating the Development and Transfer of Freeze-Drying Operations for the Manufacturing of Biopharmaceuticals by Model-Based Design of Experiments

In the pharmaceutical industry, freeze-drying (also known as lyophilization) is often used to increase the shelf life of heat-sensitive biopharmaceuticals such as protein-based therapeutic drugs an..

Identification of kinetic models of methanol oxidation on silver in the presence of uncertain catalyst behavior

Catalytic oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde is an important industrial process due to the value of formaldehyde either as a final product or as a precursor of numerous chemicals. The study of kinetics in this system is hindered by sources of uncertainty that are inherently associated to the nature and state of the catalyst (e.g., uncertain reactivity level, deactivation phenomena), the measurement system and the structure of the kinetic model equations. In this work, a simplified kinetic model is identified from data collected from continuous flow microreactor systems where catalysts with assorted levels of reactivity are employed. Tailored model-based data mining methods are proposed and applied for the effective estimation of the kinetic parameters and for identifying robust experimental conditions to be exploited for the kinetic characterization of catalysts with different reactivity, whose kinetic behavior is yet to be investigated

Primary Drying Optimization in Pharmaceutical Freeze-Drying: A Multivial Stochastic Modeling Framework

Primary drying is the most time-consuming and energy-intensive step in pharmaceutical freeze-drying. Minimizing the duration of this stage is of paramount importance to speed up process development..

A FRAMEWORK FOR PLS-SIM INTEGRATION

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Design of a General Architecture for the integration of Process Engineering Simulation and Computational Fluid Dynamics

PhD Dissertatio

A General Methodology for Hybrid Multizonal/CFD Models: Part II: Automatic Zoning

Multizonal models and, in particular hybrid multizonal/CFD models, represent a powerful approach to process simulation when complex physical and chemical phenomena (e.g. crystallisation, polymerisation, bioreactions) need describing by taking into account mixing and other fluid flow properties. A major issue in setting up such models is the definition of a suitable network of zones. This paper addresses this issue by delivering some criteria to establish a suitable network of zones. The suggested procedure will be compared by means of a mixing example