title: Investigation on novel raceway pond with inclined paddle wheels through simulation and microalgae culture experiments.
abstract: The open raceway ponds are nowadays the most used large-scale reactors for microalgae culture. To avoid the stacking of microalgae, the paddle wheels are the most widely used to circulate and mix the culture medium. In this paper, a numerical simulation using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics of open raceway ponds with different types of paddle wheels (the traditional paddle wheels and the novel paddle wheels with specially inclined angle of the blades). The particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to validate the reliability of the CFD model. The CFD simulation results showed that the novel raceway pond with 15° inclined angle of the blades had the best mixing efficiency under the same power consumption. Lastly, the results of microalgae culture experiments showed that the growth rates of Chlorella pyrenoidosa in the novel raceway pond with 15° inclined angle of the blades were higher than those in the traditional reactor. The results of the culture experiments and CFD simulations were identical with each other. Therefore, a novel paddle wheel with 15° inclined angle of the blades was obtained for better microalgae cultivation.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 373, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fanxue
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 301, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jianke
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 373, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 373, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fachao
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 373, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China. chenjianpei@ecust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jianpei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Meilong Road 130, Mail box 301, Shanghai, 200237, People's Republic of China. ygli@ecust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yuanguang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D019149:Bioreactors; D057446:Hydrodynamics; D058086:Microalgae / Q000254:growth & development*; D008954:Models, Biological
keywords: Computational fluid dynamics; Microalgae cultivation; Open raceway pond; Optimal mixing system; Particle image velocimetry