Training simulator for bioreactors

Realistic training of controlling bioreactors

Bioprocesses are very often quite complex and have a distinct dynamic behaviour, i.e. varying in time. The operation and control of bioprocesses therefore requires practice and knowledge about the dynamical behaviour of the process.

In today’s automated plants a manual control usually occurs very rarely. Therefore the operating staff lacks opportunities to practice this manual control. If faults occur which cause the automated operation to no longer be possible and a manual control by the operating staff becomes necessary, staff don’t feel confident due to this lack of practice and the operation is often not handled as well as it could be. Batches can then easily get lost. Add to that that the behaviour in critical situations and plant conditions can usually not be practiced with the real plant for security reasons.

Here it makes sense to use BioAssistent as a training simulator:

  • Training of operating staff for manual control of the plant
  • When faults occur or discrepancies from the normal process are identified, possible intervention can be practiced in real time with the training simulator, so that the best course of action can be determined.
  • When implementing new plants and processes the operating staff can get to know those in advance via the training simulator and practice the operation.
  • New staff can quickly familiarise themselves with the process and its control.
  • When implementing new control systems or changing those (i.e. step chain control in the process control system) new control sequences and algorithms can be tested in advance with the training simulator. For this the training simulator is linked with the control system via an interface.

The BioAssistent is the ideal solution for all these tasks: It can be set up in a way that the exact real process behaviour is visualised and can so enable training in realistic conditions. The operating staff can experience the dynamic reaction of the plant to control interventions in real time.

The BioAssistent as a training simulator is available in two versions:

  • Training directly via the user interface of the BioAssistent
  • Training via the user interface of the respective control system of the plant: Here the training simulator is connected to the control system via an interface. It then operates in the background instead of the real plant. The operating interventions of the staff in the control system are being sent to the training simulator. This reacts to the interventions in real time and thus supplies the control system with realistic measurements.