Abstract: For control and optimization of penicillin fermentation process, a suitable simulator should be developed. PenSim is a world-wide famous simulator for penicillin process, however, it can only generate process data for the purpose of analysis, but not applicable for the real-time control and production optimization. The internal models in Pensim were comprehensively investigated and a new penicillin fermentation simulator was developed in the environment of Matlab/Simulink. The simulator preserves highly kinetic identity with Pensim, yet allowing users to freely define the trajectories of control variables during operation (e.g. the feed rate of substrate), thus suitable for the study of control and optimization for the penicillin fermentation process.

Key words: penicillin, fermentation process, model simulator, control and optimization