The Use of Process Analytical Technology in Biofuels Production

Process analytical technology (PAT) (1) is a landmark in the acceptance of process systems engineering tools in modern biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is often said that PAT has already matured in many other processing areas and that it is up to industries like pharma to adopt those best-established practices. In actuality, this is not completely true. Many chemical processes use on-line monitoring for control purposes, but the in-process control specifications (IPC) measured are typically univariate and limited in information content about the product and process (for example, temperature or single compositions). By contrast, the aim of PAT is to use high-level quality specifications typically obtained by multiparametric in-situ, on-line techniques such as process spectroscopies (for example, manipulating a process based upon the entire sample matrix spectra and not a single compound signal).