Article: Ahsan, SS; Gumus, A; Jain, A; Angenent, LT; Erickson, D; (2015) “Integrated Hollow Fiber Membranes for Gas Delivery into Optical Waveguide Based Photobioreactors”, Bioresource Technology, 192:845-849
Abstract: Compact algal reactors are presented with: (1) closely stacked layers of waveguides to decrease light-path to enable larger optimal light-zones; (2) waveguides containing scatterers to uniformly distribute light; and (3) hollow fiber membranes to reduce energy required for gas transfer.
The reactors are optimized by characterizing the aeration of different gases through hollow fiber membranes and characterizing light intensities at different culture densities. Close to 65% improvement in plateau peak productivities was achieved under low light-intensity growth experiments while maintaining 90% average/peak productivity output during 7-h light cycles. With associated mixing costs of similar to 1 mW/L, several magnitudes smaller than closed photobioreactors, a twofold increase is realized in growth ramp rates with carbonated gas streams under high light intensities, and close to 20% output improvement across light intensities in reactors loaded with high density cultures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Funding Acknowledgement: Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy [DE-AR0000312]; National Science Foundation [ECCS-0335765]
Funding Text: This work was supported by the Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (DE-AR0000312) to D.E. and L.T.A. This work was performed in part at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant ECCS-0335765). We thank Jianping Yu, PhD (NREL, Golden, CO) for providing the Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 2x EFE algal strain. We thank Rose Harmon for assistance with gas analyses.