Research Article

Mathematical modeling of temperature effect on algal growth for biodiesel application

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Bahrain, Zallaq, Kingdom of Bahrain
² Academic Affairs and Scientific Research, Kingdom University, Riffa, Kingdom of Bahrain
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

^* e-mail: zhossain@uob.edu.bh

Received: 7 November 2018
Accepted: 13 March 2019

Abstract

Microalgae biomass is promising feedstock for the industrial production of biodiesel. Hence, research and development are required in various domains especially optimizations of growth conditions including temperature effect for mass scale operation (production of biomass, harvesting, extraction of lipid, etc). Since in middle east region, seasonal temperature variation and more rapid daily fluctuations are amenable to alter the growth kinetics of microalgae in outdoor culture and hence affect algae biomass production efficiency. Therefore, in this study, a mathematical model was developed to calculate how the algae sp. (Chlorella kessleri) will react at different temperatures. The model integrates Monod model and Arrhenius equation, and as such it describes the relationship of algal growth rate with culturing temperature and limiting nutrient concentration. The apparent activation energy and pre-exponential factors were calculated to be 2537 cal/mol and 0.0077 day⁻¹, respectively. The developed models could be useful to anticipate the effective impacts of temperature on outdoor algae culture.