ONLINE MONITORING OF FILAMENTOUS FUNGI BY DIELECTRIC SPECTROSCOPY
Resumen
Biocapacitance measurement has emerged as a widely used technique for monitoring bioprocesses that involve living cellss. Being the biomass the most important variable in bioprocesses, despite its importance, it is extremely difficult to measure and consuming so time. The Impedance Spectroscopy (IS )allows the real time estimation of cellular biomass, standing out because it allows the monitoring of viable cells without destroy them. However, its use in bioreactors continues to be a goal. Our propose was to compare the real time measurements with three different devices to monitoring biomass estimations of filamentous fungi, using a first device that consist in two electrodes connected by a bypass, which is continuously fed from the fermenter, a second device that consist in two electrodes inside the fermenter, and a third device that only perform measurements off line. The first device has been the best to monitoring filamentous fungi biomass reaching 0.95 of correlation coeficient between biomass and capacitance at low frequencies around 10 KHz, overcoming challenges such as contamination during fermentations.