Journal
ALGAL RESEARCH-BIOMASS BIOFUELS AND BIOPRODUCTS
Volume 37, Issue -, Pages 17-29Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.algal.2018.09.020
Keywords
Tubular photobioreactor; Static Kenics mixer; Light/dark cycle; Energy consumption; Vorticity intensity
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [51576075]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The design of mixers in tubular photobioreactors is a key part to reduce the cost of microalgal culture. There have been several investigations of the static Kenics mixer in tubular photobioreactors, but how to use it efficiently has been rarely reported. In this work, the efficiency of light/dark cycle enhancement, defined as the ratio of the dimensionless increment of light/dark cycle frequency to the dimensionless increment of energy consumption, is introduced to evaluate economic aspects of adding a mixer. Then, the 4-unit Kenics mixer consisting of four successive left-right-twisting units and 1-unit Kenics mixer consisting of only one unit are compared in terms of the efficiency using computational fluid dynamics, which shows that an increase of the unit number (from 1 to 4) does not bring a considerable improvement ( < 7.5%) in the L/D cycle frequency, while leads to a much higher pressure drop ( > 36%), and thus a much lower efficiency. Finally, two approaches to increasing the efficiency are developed. One is to adjust the boundary of light and dark zones in the tube to approximate the high vorticity region, and the other is to adopt more effective types of arrangement of units (e.g., the interval arrangement, instead of the already-existing successive arrangement).
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available