Characterization of bubble column photobioreactors for shear-sensitive microalgae culture

Lorenzo López-Rosales; Asterio Sánchez-Mirón; Antonio Contreras-Gómez; Francisco García-Camacho; Francine Battaglia; Lei Zhao; Emilio Molina-Grima

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2018.12.009

Characterization of bubble column photobioreactors for shear-sensitive microalgae culture

Bioresour Technol. 2019 Mar:275:1-9. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.12.009. Epub 2018 Dec 6.

Authors

Lorenzo López-Rosales¹, Asterio Sánchez-Mirón², Antonio Contreras-Gómez¹, Francisco García-Camacho³, Francine Battaglia⁴, Lei Zhao⁵, Emilio Molina-Grima³

Affiliations

¹ Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain.
² Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain; Research Center in Agrifood Biotechnology, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain. Electronic address: asmiron@ual.es.
³ Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain; Research Center in Agrifood Biotechnology, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain.
⁴ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University at Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.

PMID: 30572257
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.12.009

Abstract

The shear-sensitive marine algal dinoflagellate Karlodinium veneficum was grown in a cylindrical bubble column photobioreactor with an internal diameter of 0.044 m. Initial liquid height varied from 0.5 to 1.75 m, superficial gas velocities from 0.0014 to 0.0057 ms^-1, and nozzle diameter from 1 to 2.5 mm. Computational fluid dynamics was used to characterize the flow hydrodynamics and energy dissipation rates. Experimental gas holdup and volumetric mass transfer coefficient strongly depended on the liquid height and correlated well with the Froude number. Energy dissipation near the head space (ED_top) was one order of magnitude higher than the average energy dissipation in the whole reactor (ED_whole), and the value in the sparger zone (ED_spar) was one order of magnitude higher than ED_top. Cultures of K. veneficum were limited by CO₂ transfer at low ED_whole and severely stressed above a critical value of ED_whole.

Keywords: Bubble column; CFD; Cell damage; Energy dissipation rate; Karlodinium veneficum.

MeSH terms

Dinoflagellida / metabolism*
Hydrodynamics
Microalgae / metabolism*
Photobioreactors*