Puchong Sriouam. Debottlenecking of the airlift cultivation process for Chaetoceros Calcitrans. Master's Degree(Chemical Engineering). Chulalongkorn University. Center of Academic Resources. : Chulalongkorn University, 2007.
Debottlenecking of the airlift cultivation process for Chaetoceros Calcitrans
Abstract:
The growth limiting factors were investigated for the cultivation of Chaetoceros calcitrans, i.e. nutrient limitation, bubble shading, and self shading effects. The nutrient content in the modified F/2 medium such as silicon (as sodium silicate), nitrogen (as nitrate), plus phosphorus (as phosphate) did not have significant impacts on the cell culture in terms of final cell concentration, but did have some influence on the specific growth rate. Light obstruction due to the presence of excessive bubble in the airlift system was also found to limit the growth of the diatom, and this was called bubble shading effect. The cultivation of the diatom in the expanded-top airlift photobioreactor facilitated the disengagement of the bubbles at the top section of the system and could help reduce the bubble shading effect. However, although the shading effect at high aeration rate was eliminated, the growth was not significantly enhanced the maximum cell concentration. At high cell concentration, the growth was limited by the self shading effect which the light penetration was obstructed by the dense cell culture. The use of reactors-in-series could decrease this effect because cells were allowed to grow in separate column which connected in series. In this configuration, the first compartments contained culture at low concentration and therefore was increased to high light intensity, and the last column would contain high cell density. The effect of self shading therefore could be limited to the last column in the series. With this configuration, it was possible to achieve an ultrahigh cell density. However, the final analysis indicated that, although the single reactor configuration could be subject to self shading effect, it could provide a better productivity than the three reactors-in-series configuration.