Design of microalgal biomass production in a continuous photobioreactor: An integrated experimental and modeling approach

The light attenuation along the culture depth was modeled to fit the light absorption and backscattering coefficients. The growth model proposed by Pruvost et al. (2011b) was applied to reproduce the experimental behavior of the lab-scale PBR and to simulate the performances of a pilot unit both without and with recycle, i.e. as a function of the axial mixing, under both transient and steady-state conditions. The optimized model parameters were used to predict the microalgal growth in a pilot-scale closed raceway-pond PBR.