The lattice Boltzmann method in bioreactor design and simulation

The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for fluid flow has already proven itself a viable alternative to classical CFD (computational fluid dynamics) methods based on discrete scheme application to Navier Stokes equations governing the fluid flow. In this paper, we aim to verify the applicability of the LBM in a special case of a Couette–Taylor photobioreactor—a device comprised of two coaxial cylinders with a rotating inner wall. An appropriate numerical approach to the curved moving wall boundary condition is presented and verified by velocity flow field comparison with analytical solution. The parallelism potential of the LBM is exploited on the parallel platform of CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). Microalgae growth in the flow field simulated by the LBM is based on the photosynthetic factory (PSF) model treated in a parallel stochastic manner and implemented also on the parallel platform of CUDA. The parallel stochastic PSF solver has been validated by comparison with an analytical solution of the PSF model at constant irradiance.