A Proof of Concept for a Digital Twin of an Ultrasonic Fermentation System
This work addresses the need for intelligent control in fermentation processes for the brewing industry, but it is incremental as it extends an existing model to a specific application.
The paper tackled the problem of monitoring and optimizing yeast growth in beer fermentation by developing a proof-of-concept digital twin for an ultrasonic-enhanced system, achieving feasibility in predicting yeast culture density using environmental inputs like temperature and ultrasonic parameters.
This paper presents the design and implementation of a proof of concept digital twin for an innovative ultrasonic-enhanced beer-fermentation system, developed to enable intelligent monitoring, prediction, and actuation in yeast-growth environments. A traditional fermentation tank is equipped with a piezoelectric transducer able to irradiate the tank with ultrasonic waves, providing an external abiotic stimulus to enhance the growth of yeast and accelerate the fermentation process. At its core, the digital twin incorporates a predictive model that estimates yeast's culture density over time based on the surrounding environmental conditions. To this end, we implement, tailor and extend the model proposed in Palacios et al., allowing us to effectively handle the limited number of available training samples by using temperature, ultrasonic frequency, and duty cycle as inputs. The results obtained along with the assessment of model performance demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.