Project description
Microalgae bioreactors: going with the flow
Photosynthetic microalgae, or microscopic algae, are attracting global attention for their extensive application potential as renewable, sustainable, and economical sources of products for fields including renewable energy, bioplastics, and biopharmaceuticals. Microalgae often carry out their ‘work’ in bioreactors in which they are cultivated as suspensions of living and motile cells. Boosting the output and efficiency of these bioreactor systems requires detailed knowledge of the flow dynamics in these living suspensions. The EU-funded Flow4Algae project will characterise living microalgae in turbulent flows, their behaviours at solid and free interfaces, and how shear flow affects motility. Outcomes will support leveraging cell motility to mix things up in the bioreactors and avoid biofilm formation while facilitating cell harvesting.
Objective
Photosynthetic microalgae hold promise for the sustainable production of high-value products, bioplastics and biofuels. In bioreactors, suspensions of living, soft, and motile cells form an entirely new kind of fluids, which physiologically respond to the environment and the flow conditions. Fundamental knowledge of the flow dynamics of living suspensions is now urgently needed to develop new flow technologies for bioreactors. This project lays out an ambitious multi-scale experimental plan to establish the foundations of the fluid dynamics of living suspensions by revisiting three textbook aspects of flow: (1) turbulence, (2) the dynamics at solid and free interfaces and (3) the response to shear. This endeavour faces a new paradigm in complex flows, where fluid dynamics and cell physiology on different length scales, are deeply entwined. I will tackle this problem with a unique set of multi-scale experiments combining advanced flow diagnostics and rheology tools with new microfluidics and 3-D cell tracking recently developed in my group. These experiments will yield the first tracking measurements of living microalgae in a turbulent flow, and reveal what happens when motile cells on the small scale meet the turbulence cascade. Tracking experiments will provide new insight into the interactions of microalgae with free and textured surfaces, and, combined with rheology, show how shear flow affects cell motility and inversely how motility affects the response to shear of the suspension. Together, these experiments will uncover the interrelations between flow, cell physiology and growth, and determine how cell motility can be leveraged to optimize the turbulent mixing conditions in bioreactors, avoid biofilm formation and mediate cell harvesting.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedHost institution
2628 CN Delft
Netherlands