Photo-Bio-Reactors

Joule is advancing its Helioculture™ technology platform for Liquid Fuel from the Sun™, which is expected to eclipse the scale, productivity and cost efficiency of any known alternative to fossil fuel today. Joule's integrated systems approach spans biology, process development, bioprocessing and engineering, including development of the modular SolarConverter® (photobioreactor) system. This system enables direct fuel and chemical production in a single-step, continuous process by achieving high net energy gains while managing photon capture, CO2 delivery and mixing, thermal management, product synthesis and initial separation in an efficient process.

Joule has iterated the system design across lab scale, pilot scale, and demonstration scale, and has utilized a number of experimental and calculation-based modeling techniques to aid the scale up process. This case study will provide an overview of the scale up techniques used to address efficient photon utilization, reactor thermal management, CO2/product mass transfer and initial separation. Methods described will include the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling, Matlab based computational modeling of systems, and experimental modeling all within the context of Joule's system evolution.