Vol. 24, No. 1 (2025), Bio24366 https://doi.org/10.24275/rmiq/Bio24366

A kinetic dynamic model of a photobioreactor in batch operation for production as biofertilizer

 

Authors

M.I. Sánchez-Contreras, R.I. Beltrán-Hernández, C.A. Lucho-Constantino, P.A. López-Pérez

Abstract

A native microbial consortium (MC) was isolated and propagated in BG11 and BG110 media to promote the growth of microalgae and cyanobacteria, respectively. Biomass, chlorophyll a, ammonium, light intensity, and dissolved oxygen were monitored during MC growth in a batch photobioreactor system. The MC highlighted the high production of chlorophyll-a (11.2 mg L-1) in BG11 and the potential as a biofertilizer because of its ammonium concentration (1.1-1.9 mg L-1) in both media. An unstructured phenomenological kinetic model was developed by incorporating reaction rates in the photobioreactor for the state variables experimentally monitored. The kinetic model parameters were evaluated using the Marquardt-Levenberg algorithm, which is a nonlinear least square fitting method. The statistical evaluation of the model's effectiveness was performed using dimensionless efficiency coefficients and relative standard deviations. A global sensitivity analysis determined that the light intensity and specific oxygen consumption rate directly influenced the system. The proposed model is robust and suitable for optimization in laboratory-scale photobioreactors because it can represent the hydrodynamics parameter as kLa and the illumination area-operational volume of the photobioreactor, which is an advantage over current models for this type of system.

Keywords

Ammonium ion concentration batch culture, Monte Carlo method, mass transfer coefficient, Zea mays, microbial consortium.

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