A Proof of Concept for a Digital Twin of an Ultrasonic Fermentation System

TL;DR

This paper develops a digital twin for ultrasonic beer fermentation, integrating a predictive model to monitor and optimize yeast growth, demonstrating feasibility with limited data and real-time environmental inputs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel digital twin for ultrasonic fermentation systems, combining predictive modeling with ultrasonic stimulation to enhance fermentation monitoring and control.

Findings

The digital twin accurately predicts yeast culture density.

Ultrasonic stimulation accelerates fermentation process.

Model performs well with limited training data.

Abstract

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.