Modeling the Yeast Growth‐Cycle in a Model Wine System

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The modeling of microbial growth behavior is of great relevance to the control of many industrial processes. In this work, a deterministic model to predict the growth curve of microorganisms, from inoculation to death, is presented. To validate the model a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain has been used to conduct wine fermentation tests at 25 °C and at 2 different values of initial nitrogen concentration. Cell, nitrogen, ethanol and sugar concentration were monitored over a period of about 1200 h. The proposed model was simultaneously fitted with success to the 4 sets of available data. Moreover, due to the mechanistic structure of the proposed approach, it was possible to quantitatively describe the evolution of R1(t), R2(t), dE(t)/dt, dN(t)/dt, and dS(t)/dt during wine fermentation.