Özet:

Industry is currently in a period of great expansion, the so-called “Industry 4.0”. This period relies on the development of new sensor technologies for the generation of systems capable of collecting, distributing, and delivering information. Particularly in chemical and biochemical industries, the development of portable monitoring devices can improve many process parameters, such as safety and productivity. In this work, the design of a smartphone-based optical fiber sensing platform for the online assessment of fed-batch fermentation systems is reported. The setup is comprised of a smartphone equipped with a 3D-printed case that couples optical fibers to the phone, and of an application for collecting images from the camera and then analyzing the pixel intensity. Finally, the obtained intensities are correlated to the broth refraction index, which is function of the sucrose concentration. We calculated the sensitivity of this sensor as 85.83 RIU−1 (refractive index units), and then compared its performance to results obtained with a handheld refractometer and with Monod model predictions. It showed to be a reliable, portable, and low-cost instrument for the online monitoring of bioreactors that can be easily reproducible on-site by simply printing it. Keywords: optical fiber sensors; bioreactor monitoring; fed-batch fermentation

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