Design, fabrication and preliminary testing of an internally illuminated vertical column photobioreactor for the cultivation of Chlorella vulgaris

Date

10-2009

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering

College

College of Engineering and Agro-Industrial Technology (CEAT)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Rex B. Demafelis

Co-adviser

Milagrosa M. Goss

Committee Member

Butch G. Bataller, Jun Owen O. Nacorda

Request Access

To request access of this material, please email the administrator at uscs-mainlib.uplb@up.edu.ph

Abstract

An internally illuminated vertical column photobioreactor for the cultivation of Chlorella vulgaris was designed and fabricated. The photobioreactor consists of two glass column with 9.8 in diameter and 2.75 in diameter respectively. It also has a light source which is housed in the 2.75 in diameter glass column inside the photobioreactor. The light source is composed of 112 LED fixtures and 2 linkable 8 watts fluorescent light, wherein the LED is powered by a DC regulated power supply. The reactor also has an air supply from the compressor to promote mixing and aeration. It has syringe connected to a tube inside the reactor which is used for sampling. Two degassers are also installed on the top of the photobioreactor to promote air exchange. Two experimental runs were performed to obtain the specific growth rate and doubling time of Chlorella vulgaris that will be cultivated in the fabricated photobioreactor. The final biomass concentration of the culture is 56.9825 g/ml and 54.51 g/ml for the 1st run and 2nd run respectively. The optical density achieved at the end of the experiment was 0.332 and 0.318 and the specific growth rate obtained from the growth curve constructed was 0.0864 day-1 and 0.288 day-1 for the first run and 0.432 day-1 and 0.1008 day-1 for the second run. Doubling time was 8.022 days and 2.406 days for the first run and 1.604 days and 6.876 days for the second run. The light intensity provided by the combined LED and linkable fluorescent lamp is not sufficient enough to obtain a faster growth rate and lower doubling time of Chlorella vulgaris because the largest light intensity measured from the Quantum Radiometer/Photometer was only 1 Klux whereas the optimal intensity is 2 to 8 Klux.

Language

English

Location

UPLB Main Library Special Collections Section (USCS)

Document Type

Thesis

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS