Hydrodynamic Characterization of a Non-conventional Photobioreactor

Hydrodynamics plays a key role in photobioreactor scale-up as it influences mixing and light supply. The single-phase flow of a fluidized-bed photobioreactor was characterized by two-dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements on five planes. The flow regime is unusual as it is laminar and unsteady. As a result, an average flow was calculated on 500 images captured during 100 s. Comparison between the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and PIV results provides three main findings: The CFD model fully characterizes the laminar unsteady nature of the flow. It properly describes the flow structures in both the descending and ascending sections of the reactor. Finally, the very good agreement between the mean and root mean square velocity profiles obtained by CFD and PIV allows the quantitative validation of the model.