Twisted tubular photobioreactor fluid dynamics evaluation for energy consumption minimization
Open accessAbstract
This paper discusses a new tubular PhotoBioReactor (PBR) called twisted tubular PBR. The geometry of a twisted tubular PBR induces swirl mixing to guarantee good exposure of microalgae to Light-Dark (LD) cycles and to the nutrients and dissolved CO2. The paper analyses the energy uptake for fluid transport through the twisted tubular PBR. The analysis is based on a comparison between the twisted tubular PBR and other tubular PBRs that have swirl mixing generation. Four types of tubular PBRs are simulated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); these results are used to evaluate energy consumption and mixing conditions. Swirl number is used to evaluate mixing conditions and swirl flow. On the other hand, microalgae particles performing undulatory motion are evaluated with Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). Characteristics of the microalgae frequency in the swirl mixing depend on average flow velocity. Results show that the new twisted tubular PBR demands less energy for pumping than the other tubular PBRs that have swirl motion; providing an important step towards the construction of a highly efficient tubular PBR.
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Microalgae cells are mostly modeled as discrete objects in photobioreactor CFD models.
“In contrast, microalgae cells are mostly modeled as discrete objects [23,24,26-29,31,34,36-38,136].”
From Modeling and Simulation of Photobioreactors with Computational Fluid Dynamics—A Comprehensive Review (2022) · cites this paper as [37]
Section 2.2 describes a particle-tracking model, and Section 5.1 describes simulated paths for individual microalgae. This supports the paper as an example of modeling cells as discrete particles, but it does not establish that microalgae cells are *mostly* modeled this way across photobioreactor CFD studies. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- Authors
- Gómez-Pérez, C. A., Espinosa Oviedo, J. J., Montenegro Ruiz, L. C., & van Boxtel, A. J. B.
- Affiliations
- Universidad Nacional de Colombia (CO)
- ORCID
- Gómez-Pérez, C.A.
- Venue
- Algal Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-11
- Volume
- 27
- Pages
- 65-72
- ISSN
- 2211-9264 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2747913945
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 4
- FWCI
- 1.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Algal Research (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Enlaza-Mundos
- Universidad Nacional de Colombia
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Algal biology and biofuel production
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Fluid Dynamics and Mixing
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows
- Keywords
- tubular photobioreactor, microalgae cultivation, energy optimization, swirl number, pumping energy, light-dark cycle, flow velocity
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