| Summary: | PROJECT RESULTS: Describe the results of your research in reference to its original and/or modified Project objectives. The maximum extension of this section is 5 pages (Arial or Verdana font, size 10). The objectives of the project are: (1) To integrate the biochemical reactions and the fluid- dynamic of a bioprocess in a mathematical model based on computational fluid dynamic (CFD), (2) To optimize the integrated CFD model in terms of computational cost, and (3) To establish procedures for a reliable CFD model validation at lab-scale for a pure culture and a mixed culture bioprocess For the project, we worked on two different fields within the bioprocess context according to objective 3. First, we focused on a pure culture to produce microbial alginate and, second, a mixed culture in an anaerobic UASB reactor treating winery wastewater, both at a lab-scale. Both systems were implemented and run at different operating conditions in order to generate valuable data to fulfill Objective 3. For the alginate production, in addition to the product, substrate and biomass concentration, we incorporated the monitoring of the rheological properties of the media by measuring apparent viscosity and the torque associated with the impeller rotation (see Figure 1). Also, we designed continuous and batch abiotic systems to evaluate the strength of the torque as a reliable validation parameter. For the analysis of the hydrodynamic in the UASB reactor, we measured the concentration of two different tracers, methylene blue dye and lithium for the abiotic and biotic application, respectively. Figure 1. Experimental study of alginate production. (a) Kinetics of biomass growth, alginate production, sucrose consumption and DOT, during the batch culture conducted in a stirred fermenter. (b) Evolution of the rheological parameters for the microbial alginate batch production. Data in triplicate: white, grey and black circles for culture #1, #2 and #3, respectively. Regarding the modelling, the implementation of a CFD model for both ...
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