OP-II-3

PP-III-6THIRD GENERATION BIOFUEL PRODUCTION.DESIGN OF CO-IMMOBILIZED LABORATORY PHOTOBIOREACTORFOR STUDY OF MICROALGAE GROWTHBarajas A., Kafarov V., Barajas C.Research Center for the Sustainable Development of Industry and Energy,Department of Chemical Engineering, Industrial University of Santander,Bucaramanga, ColombiaTel +57 7 6344746, e-mail: kafarov@uis.edu.coAccording to ChistI (2007). microalgae appear to be the only source of biodiesel(third generation biofuel) that has the potential to completely displace fossil diesel.Unlike other oil crops, microalgae grow extremely rapidly and many are exceedinglyrich in oil. Microalgae commonly double their biomass within 24 h. Biomass doublingtimes during exponential growth are commonly as short as 3.5 h, and their oilcontent in microalgae can exceed 80% by weight of dry biomass.The culture of microalgae in photobioreactors is a very complex process, even bycoupling the effects of photosynthesis, flow dynamics, mass transfer and irradiancedistribution within the reactor (Luo & Al-Dahhan, 2004); but also by the restrictions ofthe microorganism per se such as low metabolism, high salinity tolerance, etc. Theproduction of energy through the system is limited by the efficiency of photosynthesisand cell anabolism (Lehr & Posten, 2009)The maximization of productivity implies the knowledge of microorganismsresponse to changes in the physical environment, as an essential step to obtain acost-effective process. (Schenk et al. 2008)This work presents the design of a photobioreactor for microalgae production,which optimizes hydrodynamic and mass transfer phenomena, by improving culturemixing owing to the use of static mixers on different angles; in addition, biologicalphenomena as photosynthesis can also be improved by mixing, which allows a fastmovement of cell between dark/light zones inside the reactor, this movement makepossible the flashing light effect, which avoid the photoinhibition process and helpsthe release of O 2 form the reactor. The use of co-immobilizer materials as staticmixers, raise the cell productivity by its polymeric nature and prevents the celladhesion on the reactor walls and allow easier harvesting of the biomass produced.The results show that the proposed photobioreactor allows the precise study of alltypes of phenomena involved in microalgae cultivation, and their laboratory-scale452