RESUMEN
In this work, mathematical modeling of microbial [Trichosporon sp.] biomass production in a stirred tank bioreactor and in an external airlift bioreactor has been investigated. A model based on a tanks-in-series model without back-flow has been used to simulate the production of single cell protein in the external airlift bioreactor under an unsteady condition and without oxygen limitation, utilizing cheese whey as a substrate. The kinetic parameters of cell growth and substrate consumption including micro [m] [maximum specific growth], K [s] [growth associated parameter], Gamma [saturated onstant] and lambda [non growth associated parameter], were determinded based on experimental data derived from the batch process in the stirred tank reactor and teh kinetic model, which resulted in 0.59 h[-1], 46.84 g/l, 0.383 and 1.275, respectively. Estimated biokinetic parameters were applied to find the profiles of biomass and cactose in the airlift bioreactor. MATLAB software was used to kind kinetic parameters and solve the equations of teh tanks-in-series model. The number of stages of the tanks-in-series obtained equals 16