SENSITIVITY OF BIFURCATION TRAITS TO MODEL PARAMETERS IN POLY-ß-HYDROXYBUTRYRATE PRODUCTION

There is growing interest in the chemical engineering community in the development of environmentally friendly products such as biopolymers. Poly-ß-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is an important biopolymer whose commercial application is still limited due to the high costs associated with its production. This paper examines a continuous bioreactor proposed for the production of PHB. The ***in.uence of minor variations in the kinetic parameters of a simple cybernetic model formulated is examined. It is shown that minor variations in these parameters can have ***signi.cant impacts on the bifurcation analyses obtained.