Determination of Process Stability and Response for Glucose Isomerisation Process

Production of fructose from glucose isomerisation process using a commercial immobilized glucose isomerase (IGI), involved many factors such as pH, temperature, feed flow rate and initial glucose concentration. This study is focused on determination of process stability, eigenvalues,l, and response of the process, eigenvector,x, at various space velocity, D=F/V (F= feed flow rate mLmin-1 and V= volume of packed-bed reactor, 65mL) with initial steady state of glucose and fructose concentration in improving formation of fructose. Simplified Michelis-Menten model was derived for glucose isomerisation with initial concentrations of glucose from 18 gL-1. The temperature under study was 60ºC with pH of 7 and D from 0, 0.3,1, 5 and 10 per minute. From the results, the steady- state of glucose concentration was obtained at 16.375 g/L and 1.75 gL-1. At D = 0.3 the eigenvalues,l, for glucose and fructose are–0.3 and –0.0002 which show that the process is stable as the eigenvalues is negative whereas the faster response is given by the eigenvector,x with values of [-0.3;0]. Increase D will increase the response of the process but at same time maintain the stability of the process.