Control & Monitoring of Bioprocesses Research

My main research lines focus on the development of Digital Twins in the context of Industry4.0. In particular, I am working on the design of strategies and tools to monitor relevant process/product variables (for instance food quality indicators) and to control and optimize industrial processes, mainly from the food and biotechnological industries.

Mathematical modeling

Mathematical modeling is central in my research lines. The main objective is to derive sets of mathematical equations that describe the evolution of the processes considered. We consider three approaches:

– Mechanistic models derived from fundamental laws (property balances) that are useful to understand the process and to represent all possible scenarios.

– Data-driven models, that are particularly useful when the processes are too complex and a mechanistic model is either difficult to obtain or computationally involved.

– Reduced order models that provide good approximations of the behavior of the process with low computational load.

Process monitoring

Typically, taking measurements of relevant process variables in the food industry involve the use of invasive techniques that avoid the commercialization of the product. In other cases, such variables cannot be directly measured. Some examples include: safety indicators of food during the sterilization process; quality and remaining shelf life of fresh fish; or product temperature during the freeze-drying process.

We combine measurements provided by hardware sensors with mathematical models to develop software sensors able to monitor, in a non invasive way, such relevant process variables.

Process control and optimization

In this line, we use mathematical models in combination with plant information (software and hardware sensors) to:

– Derive and implement advanced control techniques able to drive the plant/process to the desired operating point.

– Compute the best operating conditions (in terms of product quality, resources waste, production time, etc.) of the plant.

Industrial processes considered

The research is not limited to the theoretical development of tools and strategies but it has associated a strong experimental component. Some of the industrial processes considered include:

– Thermal sterilization of canned food

– Quality deterioration of fresh fish along the food chain

– Modified Atmosphere Packaging of food to increase shelf life