Partial Control of a Continuous Bioreactor: Application to an Anaerobic System for Heavy Metal Removal

Abstract

This work presents a control strategy for a continuous bioreactor for heavy metal removal. For this aim, regulation of the sulfate concentration, which is considered the measured and controlled state variable, allowed diminishing the cadmium concentration in the bioreactor, where the corresponding controller was designed via nonlinear bounded function. Furthermore, a nonlinear controllability analysis was done, which proved the closed-loop instability of the inner or uncontrolled dynamics of the bioreactor. A mathematical model, experimentally corroborated for cadmium removal, was employed as a benchmark for the proposed controller. Numerical experiments clearly illustrated the successful implementation of this methodology; therefore, cadmium removal amounted to more than 99%, when the initial cadmium concentration was up to 170 mg/L in continuous operating mode.