Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DOI 10.1007/s00449-015-1501-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
Received: 26 October 2015 / Accepted: 30 October 2015 / Published online: 13 November 2015
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
F. Zeng and J. Huang contributed equally to this study and share first
authorship.
& Jianpei Chen
chenjianpei@ecust.edu.cn
Yuanguang Li
ygli@ecust.edu.cn
1
Introduction
Due to the extensive application in food, drug, energy
sources, and CO2 mitigation [13], microalgae production
has received increasing attention over the last few years.
Microalgae culture systems can be broadly classified into
open systems where the culture medium is directly exposed
to the environment and closed photobioreactor (PBR)
123
170
123
(a)
171
monitoring points
(b)
The size of open raceway pond (Fig. 3a) for the optimization of the paddle wheel is of 4.5 m length (L), 1.9 m
width (W) and 0.35 m height (h). The paddle wheel was
composed of six blades. As shown in Fig. 3b, a is the
inclined angle of the blades to the axis. Because of the
crossed arrangement of the adjacent blades, the maximum
angle is 15. The novel paddle wheel was optimized by
changing the inclined angle of the blades according to
numerical analysis and further verified by photoautotrophic
cultivation of microalgae.
(a)
(b)
monitoring points
123
172
123
Governing equations
The governing equations based on ke turbulence model
can be written by the following equations [30]:
Continuity equation
op
r qU 0
ot
Momentum equation
opU
r qUU r leff rU
ot
r q r leff rUT B
dij
oxj
oxj oxi 3 oxt
osij
oxj
8
We can get the sij by sub-grid stress model. In this
study, the standard SamagorinskyLily model was chosen
to solve it.
Calculation of mixing characteristic parameters
Average velocity magnitude along the light direction (Uz),
average velocity (U), turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and the
volume percentage of dead zone (Dz) were regarded as main
parameters to evaluate PBRs mixing characteristics in the
present study. For microalgae culture, light is the most
important factor affecting biomass composition, growth rate
and product formation [9, 32]. In the research of Huang et al.
[33], the growth rate of Chlorella pyrenoidosa has a direct
correlation with fluid velocity along the light attenuation
direction. Thus, average velocity magnitude along the light
173
123
174
natural illumination. Mixing was achieved by impeller stirring. Pure CO2 was injected into pond through a small
sparger located after paddle wheel zone to maintain the pH of
microalgae at approximately 7.0. And gas flow was just
11.5 L min-1. Thus, aeration influence could be negligible.
Biomass concentration was measured in the photoautotrophic culture using a method reported in our previous
study [36]. The experiments were carried out under the same
conditions (rotation speed at 10 rpm, pH, light intensity,
temperature and wind speed) to compare the culture efficiency of raceway ponds with different paddle wheels.
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
PIV
Simulation
z/H=0.5
Uz / Vtip
Ux / Vtip
(a)
simulation process. As shown in Fig. 5, contours of average velocity with PIV and simulation were compared under
various x/L (dimensionless distance between investigated
points to the origin of the raceway pond (x) by the length
(L) of raceway ponds) and z/H (dimensionless height of
liquid by the height (H) of water) values. As shown in
Fig. 5a, the fluid was stirred by the paddle wheel, and
thrown back into the raceway pond. As a result, the highvelocity area was formed near the water surface while the
velocity was low in other region. The high-velocity area
(U/Vtip [1.2 dimensionless average velocity with tip
velocity) was located at the place where x/L range from
0.66 to 0.82 and z/H range from 0.85 to 1, respectively. The
fluid moved directly into the curved channel and then
turned downward rapidly when it reached the wall. It
formed the vortex which was located in the place where x/
L was 0.91 and z/H was 0.1. As shown in Fig. 5b, the fluid
turned downward rapidly because of the wall barrier in the
curved channel, and it rebounded at the bottom, then it
slowly restored the horizontal flow after it got out of the
curved area. The high-velocity region was formed at the
place where x/L range from 0.75 to 0.9 and z/H range from
0 to 0.25, respectively. Main characteristics of these
0.6
0.7
0.8
x/L
0.9
1.0
(b)
0.4
PIV
0.3
Simulation
0.2
z/H=0.5
0.1
0.0
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
-0.4
-0.5
-0.6
-0.7
-0.8
0.6
0.7
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.8
x/L
0.9
1.0
PIV
Simulation
z/H=0.5
Ux / Vtip
Uz / Vtip
0.4
0.2
0.0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
x/L
0.2
0.4
0.6
x/L
0.8
1.0
Fig. 6 Compare the PIV values and simulation results of Ux and Uz. a the values of Ux/Vtip and Uz/Vtip in plane 1; b the values of Ux/Vtip and Uz/
Vtip in plane 2
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175
velocity contours between PIV measured and CFD simulation were greatly consistent.
As shown in Fig. 6, a specific z/H value (0.5) was used
as a further work to compare the measured values and
simulation results of Ux and Uz. It showed that the
changes of Ux/Vtip (dimensionless average velocity
Fig. 7 Contours of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) distribution with PIV and simulation which is based on ke turbulence model and LES
model, respectively. a the results in plane 1; b the results in plane 2
(a)
(b)
0.09
0.08
0.06
0.12
0.10
2
k / Vtip
k / Vtip2
0.07
0.05
0.04
PIV
model
LES model
z/H=0.5
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.14
PIV
model
LES model
z/H=0.5
0.02
0.6
0.7
0.8
x/L
0.9
1.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
x/L
2
2
Fig. 8 Compare the PIV values and simulation results of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE). a the values of k=Vtip
in plane 1; b the values of k=Vtip
in plane 2
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176
0.80
-1
0.70
Dz (10
-1
Uz (10 m s-1)
0.75
0.65
0.60
0.55
10
15
20
(a)
25
30
35
40
0.60
0.55
0.50
0.45
0.40
0.35
0.30
0.25
0.20
0.15
0.10
10
15
20
(b)
Pv
25
30
35
40
Pv
0.40
U (m s-1)
0.35
0.30
0.25
0.20
10
15
20
(c)
Fig. 9 Relationship between power per unit volume (Pv) and mixing
characteristic parameters for various raceway ponds with different
inclined angles of the blades. a relationship between Pv and average
123
25
30
35
40
Pv
velocity magnitude along the light direction (Uz); b relationship
between Pv and the proportion of dead zone (Dz); c relationship
between Pv and average velocity (U)
177
Fig. 10 The comparison of mixing efficiency between traditional raceway pond (I) and novel raceway pond (II) with 15 inclined angle of the
blades. a Uz contours; b U contours; c Dz distribution sketch
Table 1 The comparison of CFD simulation results between the traditional raceway pond and the novel raceway pond with inclined angle of the
blades
The inclination angle of paddle wheel blades ()
N (rpm)
Uz (910-2 m s-1)
Dz (%)
U (m s-1)
P (w)
12
12
0.62
0.63
3.7
3.5
0.27
0.272
1.8
1.8
12.8
12
10
12
0.64
3.4
0.275
1.8
11.8
15
12
0.66
3.3
0.28
1.8
11.5
123
178
paddle wheels. Meanwhile, Table 2 showed that the average wind speed was within the scope of breeze which could
be negligible.
1.2
1.1
1.0
Culture experiments
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
10
Time (days)
Table 2 External environment parameters and measured power of the culture experiments
Type of
raceway
pond
Average
atmospheric
pressure (K Pa)
Average wind
speed (m s-1)
Average pH of
algae medium
Mean
temperature of
air (C)
Mean temperature
of microalgae (C)
Measured
power (w)
Traditional
raceway
pond
102
0.3
7.2
29
30.8
10
13.7
Novel
raceway
pond
102
0.3
7.1
29
31
10
12.3
123
179
Table 3 Biomass production of photoautotrophic cultivation of Chlorella pyrenoidosa in the two types of raceway ponds
Type of raceway
pond
Maximum biomass
concentration (g L-1)
Areal productivity
(g m-2 d-1)
Productivity
(g m-3 d-1)
0.83
10.18
67.88
7.9
0.92
11.89
79.25
6.1
Conclusions
By PIV experiments, it can be seen that LES was more
accurate than ke model in the prediction of turbulence
kinetic energy; however, it caused a lot of computation cost
which is not acceptable in practical applications. CFD
simulation based on ke model could be adopted to simulate the fluid mixing characteristics precisely in raceway
pond and optimize the structure of the raceway pond to
achieve a better mixing efficiency.
CFD was used to simulate the flow field of raceway
pond with different inclined angles of the blades. The
results showed that the novel raceway pond with 15
inclined angle of the blades had the best mixing effectivity
under the condition of same power consumption.
In microalgae cultivation, under the same environmental
condition, the growth rates of Chlorella pyrenoidosa in the
novel raceway pond with inclined blades were higher than
that in the traditional reactor, and areal productivity in the
novel raceway pond (11.89 g m-2 d-1) was increased by
17 % compared with the traditional raceway pond
(10.18 g m-2 d-1). The power consumption of traditional
raceway pond was 30 % (7.9 kJ g-1) higher than that of
new PBRs (6.1 kJ g-1). The results of the experiments and
CFD simulations were identical with each other. Therefore,
these studies showed a huge potential in high efficient
microalgae culture.
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