Optimal experimental conditions for Welan gum production by support vector regression and adaptive genetic algorithm

Abstract

Welan gum is a kind of novel microbial polysaccharide, which is widely produced during the process of microbial growth and metabolism in different external conditions. Welan gum can be used as the thickener, suspending agent, emulsifier, stabilizer, lubricant, film-forming agent and adhesive usage in agriculture. In recent years, finding optimal experimental conditions to maximize the production is paid growing attentions. In this work, a hybrid computational method is proposed to optimize experimental conditions for producing Welan gum with data collected from experiments records. Support Vector Regression (SVR) is used to model the relationship between Welan gum production and experimental conditions, and then adaptive Genetic Algorithm (AGA, for short) is applied to search optimized experimental conditions. As results, a mathematic model of predicting production of Welan gum from experimental conditions is obtained, which achieves accuracy rate 88.36%. As well, a class of optimized experimental conditions is predicted for producing Welan gum 31.65g/L. Comparing the best result in chemical experiment 30.63g/L, the predicted production improves it by 3.3%. The results provide potential optimal experimental conditions to improve the production of Welan gum.