Design and Optimization of Bioreactors for hydrogen Production by Computational Fluid Dynamics

G. MONTANTE; M. CORONEO; J. FRANCESCONI; A. PAGLIANTI; F. MAGELLI

Verona

Conferencia; CAE Conference; 2012

The design of a novel reactor for optimizing the fluid dynamics conditions of fermentation, stripping hydrogen from the liquid and moving the gas to a membrane module without using fan or compressors is presented. The aim of this work is to development and validation of a reliable CFD simulation method for the bioreactor optimization and scale up. The main steps in the modeling of the overall process of production of hydrogen from organic waste fermentation are: turbulent gas-liquid fluid dynamics in vortex ingesting configuration, definition of a kinetic model for the fermentation reaction and hydrogen mass transfer flux from the liquid phase to the recirculated inert gas. Solution of the model equations was achieved by the finite-volume CFD code FLUENT. Te results show that the CFD strategy already developed for simpler gas-liquid stirred vessels can be usefully applied to the modeling of bioreactor for hydrogen fermentation.