Photobioreactor geometric structures

The Use of Linear Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes (LTIP) for Calculation of Parameters Related to Conservative Mechanisms in the Process of Light-to-Chemical Energy Conversion P/2e Calculation and Analysis Thermodynamic Efficiency and Energetic Coupling Analysis Experimental Validation of the Proposed Model for Different Simple Geometric Structures of a Photobioreactor... 

The main steps in our model and their organization within this chapter are summarized in Fig. 1. Our practice of the Monte Carlo method extends beyond the solution of the radiative transfer equation in Section 4, we also argue that the Monte Carlo method is well suited for numerical implementation of the entire model, especially in research on photobioreactors with complex geometric structure. 

In Fig. 24, the irradiance field obtained with the two-flux approximation for fi —> 00 is compared with the Monte Carlo reference solution in the case of collimated solar-light incidence. The two-flux approximation wiU be used in Section 5.6 to analyze the coupling between radiative transfer and photosynthesis thermokinetics in photobioreactors with simple geometric structure. 

NUMERICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF PHOTOBIOREACTOR MODELS BY THE MONTE CARLO METHOD, INCLUDING RIGOROUS SOLUTION OF THE RADIATIVE TRANSFER EQUATION FOR COMPLEX GEOMETRIC STRUCTURE... 

Figure 26 (A) A 25 L prototype of the solar volumetrically illuminated photobioreactor DiCoFluV (Cornet, 2010). (B) EDStar geometric structure both the reactor 1Z) and the 979 light-diffusing optical fibers [T) are cylinders 1 m high the reactor s diameter is 16.5 cm, the distance between two fiber axes is djr = 4.8 mm, and the fiber radius is ryr = 1.2 mm.Tl and T are diffuse-reflective with uniform reflectivity p and pT, respectively.. is Lambertian emitting with the uniform surface flux density qn,v (Q Two-dimensional hexagonal lattice fiber arrangement an optical-path example in the culture medium V.

Figure 27 Calculation time for estimating the specific rate of photon absorption A within the reaction volume of the DiCoFluV photobioreactor, as a function of the number of light-diffusing optical fibers. The results were obtained in EDStar (Delatorre et al., 2014) by implementation of the algorithm presented in Section 4.1 for different versions of the geometric structure in Fig. 26B (containing different numbers of fibers).

Therefore, available computer graphics tools allow us to simulate any geometric structure of a photobioreactor with the same Monte Carlo algorithm and with acceptable calculation time. This recent advance in the field of the Monte Carlo method opens up interesting perspectives on photobioreactor design, for example, in relation to the optimization algorithm. 

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