Modified mathematical model combining kinetics and hydrodynamics for microalgae metabolism

Abstract

The algae plants have the ability to grow up very fast relatively to other plants on this planet, and they have a huge ability to produce different types of renewable energy source like the bio hydrogen fuel. When compared to the fossil fuel sources like gasoline, the hydrogen production from algae tends to have a very high cost per unit of energy due to its inability in finding the ideal culture medium and the proportions of nutrients. This project is a modified version of an existing kinetic model built by Mazloum (2015) in order to combine together the kinetics and hydrodynamics to check different conditions of cultures and nutrients for algae growth. A good fit between the metabolic pathway and the simulation results has been proved. To validate this model, parameter estimation is accomplished on heterotrophic, autotrophic and mixotrophic conditions. Initial glucose variation by 5 folds increases the biomass growth by 45% in heterotrophic scenario. Nitrates increase the growth by 39% when increasing its initial concentration about 10 times. The light intensity had the major influence in autotrophic culture where it increased the growth by 50% when increasing the intensity from 20 to 500 µmol photons.m-2 .s-1 . This model is considered as a virtual laboratory used for the simulation of microalgae growth that show better representation of the relation between biomass, products and metabolic components.