Identification of reaction schemes for bioprocesses: Determination of an incompletely known yield matrix

In this paper we propose a methodology to determine the structure of the yield coefficient matrix K in a mass balance based model and to identify its coefficients from a set of available data. The first step consists in estimating the number of reactions that must be taken into account to represent the main mass transfer within the bioreactor. This provides the dimension of K. Then we propose a method to directly determine the structure of the matrix (i.e. mainly its zeros and the signs of its coefficients). These methods are illustrated with simulations of a process of lipase production from olive oil by Candida rugosa.