title: Development of Low-Cost Microcontroller-Based Interface for Data Acquisition and Control of Microbioreactor Operation.
abstract: This article presents the development of a low-cost microcontroller-based interface for a microbioreactor operation. An Arduino MEGA 2560 board with 54 digital input/outputs, including 15 pulse-width-modulation outputs, has been chosen to perform the acquisition and control of the microbioreactor. The microbioreactor (volume = 800 µL) was made of poly(dimethylsiloxane) and poly(methylmethacrylate) polymers. The reactor was built to be equipped with sensors and actuators for the control of reactor temperature and the mixing speed. The article discusses the circuit of the microcontroller-based platform, describes the signal conditioning steps, and evaluates the capacity of the proposed low-cost microcontroller-based interface in terms of control accuracy and system responses. It is demonstrated that the proposed microcontroller-based platform is able to operate parallel microbioreactor operation with satisfactory performances. Control accuracy at a deviation less than 5% of the set-point values and responses in the range of few seconds have been recorded.
authors.affiliation: Department of Control and Mechatronic Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Abdul Rashid
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Husain
authors.affiliation: Department of Control and Mechatronic Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Yaser
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hadad
authors.affiliation: Process Systems Engineering Centre, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia nazrul@cheme.utm.my.
authors.forename: Muhd Nazrul Hisham
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Zainal Alam
mesh_terms: D019149:Bioreactors / Q000191:economics*; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003470:Culture Media / Q000737:chemistry; D003625:Data Collection; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media
keywords: Arduino MEGA 2560; data acquisition; microbioreactor; microcontroller; process control