Noninferior periodic operation of the biological reactor

Abstract

The optimal periodic operation of the biological reactor was studied from the standpoint of the two‐objective programming problem. The noninferior set with respect to the cell productivity and the conversion of the substrate into the biomass was determined by use of the optimization technique due to Miele. It was shown that the noninferior set was composed in general of the repeated batch branch and the repeated fed‐batch branch, which occupy the high‐productivity portion and the high‐conversion portion of the noninferior set, respectively. However, the latter branch disappears in the case of growth kinetics with no substrate inhibition. In addition, the extreme points of the noninferior set yielding the maximal productivity and the maximal conversion represent such operations that are equivalent to the steady‐state operation (chemostat culture) and the batch operation, respectively.