Phenomenological modeling of polyols, citric acid and bio-oil concurrent production by Yarrowia lipolytica from glycerol

Biochemical routes have shown to be an interesting alternative for the reuse of glycerol, largely generated as a co-product in biodiesel production reaction. Previous works from the research group have demonstrated that glycerol can be efficiently assimilated by Yarrowia lipolytica to produce erythritol, mannitol, citric acid and bio-oil. To better understand the metabolic pathways involved, this work proposes a mathematical model to describe the observed phenomenon. This is the first computational work to model polyol's production and to address the simultaneous formation of four products by Yarrowia lipolytica. Particle Swarm Optimization and Interior Point Optimization were employed together to find the global optima. The developed model proved to be significantly promising and capable of satisfactorily predict the system's behavior in more than one experimental condition. Not only products’ concurrent formation was accurately described, but also polyols’ modeling was successfully performed, reaching R² values greater than 0.93.