Renewable Energy: Integrated Smart Photobioreactor (PBR) For Mircoalgae Culture Application

Abstract: In this study, the focus will be on the design and development of a smart photobioreactor (PBR) for microalgae culture with integrated harvesting components meant for renewable energy application. While there are lots of PBR designs have been reported, but the harvesting unit is not integrated in the PBR or built separately/stand-alone. Therefore, the extraction process is not straight-forward and will be a bit complicated during harvesting. Having a stand-alone harvesting unit means it involves more manpower and need to be manually done which is not error proof. In this paper, the idea is to have a PBR that is smartly monitor or control the growth or cultivation of the microalgae at its most optimum growth parameters together with a built-in harvesting system which will collect the output from microalgae automatically and in a closed-loop manner. For this purpose, a prototype of a PBR was built to mimic a relatively real-case growth condition.

Keywords: Photobioreactor; Microalgae culture; Smart; Integrated; Harvesting; Renewable energy.