Experimental Calibration of a Biohydrogen Production Estimation Model

In this work, a dynamic physics-based model developed for the prediction of biohydrogen production in a compact tubular photobioreactor was calibrated experimentally. The spatial domain in the model was discretized with lumped control volumes, and the principles of classical thermodynamics, mass, species and heat transfer were combined to derive a system of ordinary differential equations whose solution was the temperature and mass fraction distributions across the entire system. Two microalgae species, namely, Acutodesmus obliquus and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii strain ccI25 were cultured in triplicate with different culture media via indirect biophotolysis. Experimental biomass and hydrogen concentrations were then used to adjust the specific microalgae growth and hydrogen production coefficients based on residual sum of squares and the direct search method.