Automatización de un proceso químico de Fermentación Anaerobia con un reactor ubicado en los laboratorios de Ingeniería Química de la Universidad de Pamplona.

Abstract

Anaerobic fermentation is a process that is carried out by microbial bacteria working in the absence of oxygen, with this process different organic wastes can be reused such as starch, sugars, oils, agricultural biomass, forest biomass, pulp, among others. [1] These substrates are placed in a hermetically sealed container so that anaerobic microorganisms can convert the waste into a usable product. Depending on the substrate, a usable product is obtained, such as alcohol, methane, enzymes, biogas, biomass, among others. [1] Microorganisms work with specific conditions, which requires the use of electronic instrumentation to determine variables such as temperature, pH and agitation. [1] [2]. In the present project, the automation of an anaerobic fermentation process was carried out, which, by means of the entry of sugars into a reactor and thanks to the anaerobic microorganisms, alcohol is generated with a higher percentage of bioethanol. A batch flow reactor was used for this process in which variables such as temperature, pH, alcohol and agitation were monitored. The process is automated by the Raspberry pi Pico embedded system which is programmed by means of the Tonny license software (interpreter of the MycroPython programming language) which is exclusive for microcontroller programming. As for the graphical interface, it was done using Visual Basic.NET through the integrated development environment IDE Visual Studio. Raspberry pi Pico is a device that allows the use of different communications such as (UART, SPI, I2C), for this project it was necessary to use several communications for the coupling of the sensors. Finally, a PID controller was used for temperature control.