Abstract

GONZALEZ-MUNOZ, Niela et al. Kinetic modeling of Chlorella vulgaris cultivation in pig waste: effect of solar irradiation. RTQ [online]. 2023, vol.43, n.2, pp. 222-237.  Epub May 30, 2023. ISSN 2224-6185.

There is an exponential increase in hog farms around the world to meet the increasing demand for protein, resulting in a significant amount of hog wastewater. Within the biological treatments, to address this problem, the cultivation of microalgae has gained importance in recent years, since its growth requires low-cost substrates and can be effective for obtaining compounds with high added value. The objective of this work is to obtain a kinetic model of a mixotrophic culture of Chlorella vulgaris in open-air pig waste that considers the effect of solar irradiation. As a result of the investigation, a kinetic model is obtained to describe the symbiotic growth of the microalgae and the Chlorella vulgaris bacterium in an open-air culture system that uses pig waste as the only source of carbon and nutrients. The model obtained makes it possible to predict the maximum concentrations of the mixed biomass considering the effect of accumulated solar radiation during the day. The optimum value of solar irradiation is 5209 W/m2h, at which 11 gl-1 of biomass are obtained. The validation of the model showed a 99,2% correlation between the observations and the predictions for variable solar irradiation conditions, indicating a good performance in practice.

Keywords : kinetic modeling; biological treatment; open culture system.

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