Photo-Biological Reactor for Organic Waste Consumption and Hydrogen Production

L. F. de Souza[1]
[1]Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
Published in 2014

A simple steady-state photo-fermentative biochemical model was developed using the COMSOL Multiphysics'® Transport of Diluted Species physics interface. A dimensionless model seeks optimal physical parameters based on given biochemical parameters found in literature. A parametric sweep of the physical parameters is enabled without altering the mesh. Other limitations can be easily added to this model, but were omitted for simplicity. A daily substrate load was made constant and several combinations of physical parameters for complete degradation and production were found, so eventually many reactor designs are discarded from the project development. Even with all the simplifying hypotheses made, this model leads the search for optimal bioreactor conditions, so other important considerations can now enhance this initial study.