Abstract
BackgroundPhotosynthetic microalgae have been in the spotlight of biotechnological production (biofuels, lipids, etc), however, current barriers in mass cultivation of microalgae are limiting its successful industrialization. Therefore, a mathematical model integrating both the biological and hydrodynamical parts of the cultivation process may improve our understanding of relevant phenomena, leading to further optimization of the microalgae cultivation.ResultsWe introduce a unified multidisciplinary simulation tool for microalgae culture systems, particularly the photobioreactors. Our approach describes changes of cell growth determined by dynamics of heterogeneous environmental conditions such as irradiation and mixing of the culture. Presented framework consists of (i) a simplified model of microalgae growth in a culture system (the advection-diffusion-reaction system within a phenomenological model of photosynthesis and photoinhibition), (ii) the fluid dynamics (Navier-Stokes equations), and (iii) the irradiance field description (Beer-Lambert law). To validate the method, a simple case study leading to hydrodynamically induced fluctuating light conditions was chosen. The integration of computational fluid dynamics (ANSYS Fluent) revealed the inner property of the system, the flashing light enhancement phenomenon, known from experiments.ConclusionOur physically accurate model of microalgae culture naturally exhibits features of real system, can be applied to any geometry of microalgae mass cultivation and thus is suitable for biotechnological applications.
Highlights
Photosynthetic microalgae have been in the spotlight of biotechnological production, current barriers in mass cultivation of microalgae are limiting its successful industrialization
We note that microalgae cells are forced to travel between dark and light sides of the CouetteTaylor device which is an analogy to the flashing light regime and the flashing light enhancement [15]
We presented the general unified modeling framework for microalgae culture systems (MCS) which can be applied to an arbitrary geometry of the production system and any microbial strain in general
Summary
Photosynthetic microalgae have been in the spotlight of biotechnological production (biofuels, lipids, etc), current barriers in mass cultivation of microalgae are limiting its successful industrialization. The global warming, gradual oil fuel depletion, higher demands for energy and food consumptions are some of the current challenges our society is facing. These organisms have high photosynthetic efficiency, biomass growth and lipids content [1]. After the failure of the first generation biofuels based on corn and soya, which created a food shortage in the third world, the scientific community focused on simple photosynthetic. Papacek et al BMC Systems Biology 2018, 12(Suppl 5): is to employ microalgae and cyanobacteria in biotechnology field as a potential biofuel source, for example a genetic modification increasing lipid content [6]. The other applications, e.g., pharmaceutical (bioactive metabolites), nutritional (animal feed and human food and supplements), are less important compared to the renewable energy business
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