Seminar Details
2021-09-28 (14h) : Convex Optimization of Bioprocesses
At Euler building (room a.002)
Organized by Mathematical Engineering
Speaker :
Josh Taylor (University of Toronto)
Abstract :
In this talk, we begin by optimizing the gradostat, in which several chemostats are interconnected by mass flow and diffusion. The gradostat is of interest both as a classical nonlinear system and because the basic network structure and nonlinearities appear in a wide variety of bioprocesses, including wastewater treatment. We formulate a convex relaxation of the gradostat. The relaxation is exact under several conditions, for instance, if the gradostat is outflow connected and its flow matrix is irreducible. When the microbial growth in the bioreactors is described by the Monod or Contois functions, the relaxation is a second-order cone program, which can be solved at scales of over 10^5 variables in minutes with industrial software. We also discuss how to extend the work to a general class of bioprocesses, and present an example based on wastewater treatment.