Bioreactor

About: Bioreactor is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9980 publications have been published within this topic receiving 192690 citations. The topic is also known as: bioreactors.

Improved biogas production from palm oil mill effluent by a scaled-down anaerobic treatment process.

Abstract: This is a scale-down study of a 500-m3 methane recovery test plant for anaerobic treatment of palm oil mill effluent (POME) where biomass washout has become one of the problems because of the continuous mixing of effluent during anaerobic treatment of POME. Therefore, in this study, anaerobic POME treatment using a scaled down 50-l bioreactor which mimicked the 500-m3 bioreactor was carried out to improve biogas production with and without biomass sedimentation. Three sets of experiments were conducted under different conditions in terms of biomass sedimentation applied to the system. The first experiment was operated under semi-continuous mode whereas the second and third experiments were operated based on mix and settle mode. As expected, biomass retention improved the anaerobic process as the POME treatment incorporated with mix and settle system were able to operate at an organic loading rate (OLR) of 3.5 and 6.0 kg COD/m3/day respectively, while the semi-continuous operated anaerobic treatment only achieved OLR of 3.0 kg COD/m3/day. The highest biogas and methane production rates achieved were 2.42 m3/m3 of reactor/day and 0.992 m3/m3 of reactor/day, respectively at OLR 6.0 kg COD/m3/day. The biomass or solids retention in the reactors was represented by the total solids measured in this study.

Optimizing the Production of Bacterial Cellulose in Surface Culture: A Novel Aerosol Bioreactor Working on a Fed Batch Principle (Part 3)

Abstract: Parts 1 and 2 have shown that the rate of production of bacterial cellulose stagnates because of the limitation of substrate supply and a wall effect, which hinders the removal of the product from the active cell zone. This paper demonstrates, how both of these problems can be eliminated in a novel bioreactor, where the substrates (mainly glucose and oxygen) are both fed directly to the surface of the product cellulose. This involves the generation of an aerosol spray of glucose and its even distribution to the living bacteria on the medium-air interface. The apparatus was built and operated up to eight weeks with a constant rate of cellulose production. The aerosol system provides the basis for an economic production of bacterial cellulose in surface culture.