2134/9579554.v1 Haider Ali Haider Ali Jannike Solsvik Jannike Solsvik Jonathan Wagner Jonathan Wagner Dongda Zhang Dongda Zhang Klaus Hellgardt Klaus Hellgardt Cheol Woo Park Cheol Woo Park CFD and kinetic‐based modeling to optimize the sparger design of a large‐scale photobioreactor for scaling up of biofuel production Loughborough University 2019 Biofuel CFD Kinetic modeling Photobioreactor Scale-up Sparger design 2019-08-13 13:50:28 Journal contribution https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/CFD_and_kinetic_based_modeling_to_optimize_the_sparger_design_of_a_large_scale_photobioreactor_for_scaling_up_of_biofuel_production/9579554 Microalgal biofuels have not yet achieved wide‐spread commercialization, partially as a result of the complexities involved with designing and scaling up of their biosystems. The sparger design of a pilot‐scale photobioreactor (120 L) was optimized to enable the scale‐up of biofuel production. An integrated model coupling computational fluid dynamics and microalgal biofuel synthesis kinetics was used to simulate the biomass growth and novel biofuel production (i.e., bisabolene) in the photobioreactor. Bisabolene production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutant was used as an example to test the proposed model. To select the optimal sparger configuration, a rigorous procedure was followed by examining the effects of sparger design parameters (number and diameter of sparger holes and gas flow rates) on spatially averaged bubble volume fraction, light intensity, friction velocity, power input, biomass concentration, and bisabolene production. The optimized sparger design increases the final biomass concentration by 18%, thereby facilitating the scaling up of biofuel production.