Growth impact of hydrodynamic dispersion in a Couette-Taylor bioreactor

The development of a distributed parameter model of microalgae growth is presented. Two modelling frameworks for photo-bioreactor modelling, Eulerian and Lagrangian, are discussed and the complications residing in the multi-scale nature of transport and reaction phenomena are clarified. It is shown why is the mechanistic two time-scale model of photosynthetic factory the adequate model for biotechnological purposes. For a special laboratory Couette–Taylor bioreactor with cylindrical geometry, we reached reliable simulation results using a steady-state Eulerian approach and the finite difference scheme.Moreover, we prove numerically that the resulting photosynthetic production rate in this reactor goes, for growing inner cylinder angular velocity, to a certain limit value, which depends on the average irradiance only. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.