Subspace Based Model Identification for an Industrial Bioreactor: Handling Infrequent Sampling Using Missing Data Algorithms

This manuscript addresses the problem of modeling an industrial (Sartorius) bioreactor using process data. In the context of the Sartorius Bioreactor, it is important to appropriately address the problem of dealing with a large number of variables, which are not always measured or are measured at different sampling rates, without taking recourse to simpler interpolation- or imputation-based approaches. To this end, a dynamic model for the Sartorius Bioreactor is developed via appropriately adapting a recently presented subspace model identification technique, which in turn uses nonlinear iterative partial least squares (NIPALS) algorithms to gracefully handle the missing data. The other key contribution is evaluating the ability of the identification approach to provide insight into the process by computing interpretable variables such as metabolite rates. The results demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach to model data from the Sartorius Bioreactor.