Stability of the 13C column separation in industrial mode of operation
Based on the original cryogenic column conceived and built by National Institute for Research and Development of Isotopic and Molecular Technologies Cluj-Napoca, it is necessary to implement control algorithms for the industrial mode of operation of this equipment, in order to produce some chemical compounds with higher concentration in (13C), compounds asked in various domains. The present work deals with column efficiency analysis and stability in industrial mode of operation.
Observer based safe operation of the 13C cryogenic separation column
The cryogenic 13C separation process is very slow, the concentration of this isotope reaches the desired value during weeks. A lot of variables, essential for the separation process must be controlled, so that any malfunction can compromise the whole production. The most important information about the system state is given by the carbon monoxide level sensor, with disastrous consequences by its failure (conductor breaking, power line failure, etc.). The authors try to solve this problem using an observer which generates the observed level information and compare, in normal mode of operation, the observed value with the real, measured variable. By sensor failure, the expected difference will increase drastically and the control system will switch to the observed level information.
New method for analysis of enzymatic reactions: Thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of aspartame precursor
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. A precursor of aspartame, N-(benzyloxycarbonyl)-l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (Z-APM) was synthesized and hydrolyzed with thermolysin in an aqueous monophasic system. Graphical plotting methods and/or nonlinear regression have been used to analyze enzymatic reactions because of the nonlinearity of enzymatic rate equations. There are, however, problems: the former require accurate measurement of the initial reaction rate and the latter gives no analytical information. The authors proposed a method to solve the nonlinear enzymatic rate equations with respect to the concentration of a product with the Taylor expansion, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism (Murakami, Y., Hirata, M., and Hirata, A., J. Ferment. Bioeng., 82, 246–252, 1996). This solution, however, is complex for practical use. In this paper, a simpler solution to explain the thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of Z-APM is obtained. New methods to determine the kinetic parameters, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism, based on the approximated solution are proposed. The results calculated using the obtained kinetic parameters can satisfactorily explain the experimental results, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed analysis. We must know the relation between the concentrations of substrates and a product, and accurately evaluate of the result obtained using Taylor expansion when we determine the kinetic parameters using our newly developed methods. The methods to determine the kinetic parameters of the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism described in this paper is, however, expected to be applied to general enzymatic reactions.