Design of a Cylindrical Photobioreactor with Central Orifice for the Production of Microalgae

N. N. V. Ramirez[1], L. M. Raymundo[1], J. O. Trierweiler[1]
[1]Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Published in 2014

It is desired to design a photobioreactor for the production of voluminous samples of microalgae for lipid quantification. The reactor should provide good growing conditions even with periodic withdrawal of samples. It also should be compact for better use of laboratory space. Therefore, a photobioreactor with concentric tubes was modeled to verify the circulation of the culture medium.

The velocity profile had a similar shape for three cases of photobioreactor considering: full plate (FP), half plate (HP) and no plate (NP). The chosen reactor is HP, because of its superior rising velocity compared to NP. The HP also offers more volume to sampling, justifying its choice rather than FP.