Automated Quantitative Analysis of Ethanol, Glucose and NADH in the UV/VIS and Short NIR

There is a variety of probes and analytical techniques on the market for monitoring oxygen concentration, pH value, temperature or optical density. But similar automated analytical techniques are currently not available for a continuous measurement of other biotechnologically important substances like glucose, ethanol and NADH. In order to measure these substances directly and automated in the bioreactor, a suitable measurement system is required. For this purpose, in-line absorbance measurements have already been performed in the NIR and MIR. Advantages of these wavelength ranges over the UV/VIS are the stronger absorbance. However, the wavelength range from 400nm to 1000nm is also exciting due to the lower interfering water absorption and the low cost measurement technology based on silicon. Besides it is interesting due to the possible fluorescence of NADH.

The aim of this work will be to clarify whether it is possible to build up a system for automated in-line measurement of bioprocess parameters and to develop a calibration model for a prediction of concentrations via multivariate chemometric algorithms for UV/VIS and short NIR.