Abstract
Optimisation and upscaling of biohydrogen production in externally pumped-recirculated photobioreactors (PBRs) are hampered by the infeasible computational cost of coupling hydrodynamics, to light transmission and bioreaction transport, through the column and peristaltic pump. This study approximates the complexities of peristaltic pump with inlet-outlet boundary conditions (BCs), introduces mean residence time (tm) for updating BCs, and unifies tm-dependent accelerated growth kinetics to parallelised Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) environment. Due to superior cost-savings compared to previous CFD studies, the bioprocess reliability under 5% coupled CFD-photo-bioreaction parameter uncertainties was investigated for the first time, and thoroughly validated with literature bioreaction data for a 1L PBR. The results agreed to within 10% of error for simulated velocities, identifying undesired regions with poor radial mixing, and showed similar output uncertainties between the coupled CFD-photo-bioreactions and pure photo-bioreactions models, indicating absence of numerical diffusion. Therefore, this approach has great potentials for modelling other similar biosystems.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
