Hybrid Control and Optimization of a Sustainable Biorefinery for the Industrial Production of Microalgae, HYCO2BIO

This project deals with the analysis, study and application of modelling, hybrid control and data-based learning techniques for the optimization of microalgae production with the simulataneous aim of generating biofuels, obtaining bioferlizers, wastewater treatment and making derived food products. In the last decades, microalge have been considered as promisings solution to build microalgae-based biorefineries because of their high contents in proteins, lipids and carbohydrates. Thus, the main objective of this project consists in the development of a self-sustinable process for the biomass production, which allows to mitigae greenhouse gas emisions, tranform residual and produce high-added derived products. Notice that these proceses present a highgly compelx nonlinear dynamics with different time scales, mainly due to the biological character of these systems and the high influecne of weather conditions. Therefore, the following modelling and control tasks are proposed in order to fulfill the objectives of this project:

1. Development of modelling framework to obtain nonlinear models and estimators for the microalgae production into a sustanible biorefinery.
2. Developtment of hybrid control and data-based learning techniques for a efficient and sustanible production of microalgae.
3. Implemenation and valdiation of the proposed modelling and control approaches on industrial photobioreactors as part of a micralgae-based biorefinery.

This proposal constitutes a continuation of two consolidated research lines by the applicant groups. First, it is considered as natural continuation of the research line about biomass production in industrial photobioreactors, where the Almería group has leaded 3 research projects in previous National Research Plans. Second, for the Murcia group, it contitues a continuation of the research line on hybrid control, where also 3 research projects were lead in the past on this topic. Notice that the groups involved have a strong and close collaboration through projects and joint publications. Thanks this remarkable experience, it is expected to exploit this potential throught a high-level theoretical-practical synergy. Moreover, it is important to highligh the international scope of the propsal with the participation of 4 foregin researchers (Sweden, Italy, Isarel and USA). In the same way, the subject of the project is framed in the strategic lines of the European Union and the Spanish National Plan of Research, within of the challenges of Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and Bioeconomy. In this sense, the achievement of the objectives would have a significant contribution in this fields and would have a real impact on the competitiveness of this kind of processes in the industrial sector. As a result, several companies and research centres have shown their interest in this proposal, such as European Algae Biomass Association, Aqualia, Biorizon, CIESOL, Mtorres, Centro Tecnológico Naval y del Mar y Centro Tecnológico Nacional de la Conserva y la Alimentación.