Estimation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii biomass concentration from chord length distribution data

Patricio Lopez-Exposito,Angeles Blanco Suarez,Carlos Negro

doi:10.1007/s10811-015-0749-4

Patricio Lopez-Exposito, Angeles Blanco Suarez + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-015-0749-4

Copy DOI

Abstract

A novel method to estimate the concentration of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii biomass was developed. The method employs the chord length distribution information gathered by means of a focused beam reflectance probe immersed in the culture sample and processes the data through a feedforward multilayer perceptron. The multilayer perceptron architecture was systematically optimised through the application of a simulated annealing algorithm. The method developed can predict the concentration of microalgae with acceptable accuracy and, with further development, it could be implemented online to monitor the aggregation status and biomass concentration of microalgal cultures.

Highlights

The production of microalgal biomass has received a great deal of attention in the last years
The work presented in this paper focuses on the evaluation of a focused beam reflectance measurement probe (FBRM) as a tool for devising a method to allow the online estimation of biomass concentration in microalgal cultures
The FBRM probe is a device that projects a laser beam moving in a circular path into an aqueous medium and registers the backscattered beam produced when the laser path crosses a particle

Summary

Introduction

The production of microalgal biomass has received a great deal of attention in the last years. Among them, harvesting constitutes a major challenge. Those harvesting methods involving flocculation of microalgal biomass, namely dissolved air flotation, bio-. The work presented in this paper focuses on the evaluation of a FBRM as a tool for devising a method to allow the online estimation of biomass concentration in microalgal cultures. The probe was developed to monitor crystallisation (e.g. J Appl Phycol (2016) 28:2315–2322. The FBRM probe is a device that projects a laser beam moving in a circular path into an aqueous medium and registers the backscattered beam produced when the laser path crosses a particle. The distribution of chord lengths (CLD) constitutes a representation of the actual particle length distribution (PLD) (Li and Wilkinson 2005)

Methods

Results

Conclusion