A model for the effect of light on the growth of microalgae in outdoor condition

Darvehei, P., Bahri, P.A.ORCID: 0000-0003-4661-5644 and Moheimani, N.R.ORCID: 0000-0003-2310-4147 (2017) A model for the effect of light on the growth of microalgae in outdoor condition. In: 27th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering. Elsevier, pp. 2737-2742.

Abstract

Models are useful and cost effective tools for understanding the behaviour of a system. As microalgae are potential raw material sources for biofuel production, the need for a rigorous model to predict their growth performance in various conditions is critical. Despite good agreements between models and indoor microalgal experiments, when it comes to the real life outdoor cultivation of microalgae most of these models have not been validated and hence cannot be trusted. Among all the conditions affecting microalgal growth, light is the most significant one and its role in outdoor culture becomes more important as the light intensity varies significantly during the day. In this study a new microalgal growth model is derived based on the energy balance of an outdoor raceway pond, to predict the growth rate of Tetraselmis in terms of cell density as a function of daily light exposure. Two sets of data are used in this study, one for training the model and estimating its parameters and the other to test the model and validate its performance. The results indicate that despite a few cases of inaccuracy, in most cases the model is able to accurately predict culture cell density.

Item Type:	Book Chapter
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Engineering and Information Technology School of Veterinary and Life Sciences
Publisher:	Elsevier
Copyright:	Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/40260

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