(143d) Global Optimization of Oil Production in Microalgae Bioreactor

Sustainability and renewability of bio-fuels make them suitable replacements for fossil fuels, however because of slow production rate and high production costs, they are not economically comparable with traditional fuel sources. Bio-fuel production from phototrophic and heterotrophic microalgae is a novel method of oil production that is going to replace bio-fuel production from crops. In this method there is no need for vast land, high amounts of water and in the case of heterotrophic microalgae there is no need for sunlight. Furthermore, increasing oil production rate can ensure the economic feasibility of biodiesel production. 

This work is built on an existing heterotrophic microalgae fed-batch model, see [1], which describes the algae growth and oil production. The fed-batch microalgae reactor is fed by two nutrients, glucose as carbon source and glycine as nitrogen source. In this work, maximum possible oil production in the shortest time interval is calculated by using a global optimization technique. The highly nonlinear rate functions, time varying parameters and uncertainties in the modeling are taken into account within the optimization framework. 

Reference:

 [1] H. De la Hoz Siegler, A. Ben-Zvi, R.E. Burrell, W.C. McCaffrey, The dynamics of heterotrophic algal cultures, Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 5764-5774