News
Where engineering meets biology
A new paper has been published on the Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis of a stacked duckweed bioreactor system:
Maguire, D. et al. (2023) Where engineering meets biology: The Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis of a stacked duckweed bioreactor. Aquacultural Engineering, 102375.
DOI: 10.1016/j.aquaeng.2023.102375
The research involved scientists from Process and Chemical Engineering and from Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UCC.
Duckweed species are floating plants that show rapid growth and can be cultured on agri-food industry wastewater. The resulting plant biomass can be used as a valuable high-protein livestock feed and a biofuel feedstock. The development of multitiered (i.e., vertically stacked) indoor bioreactors enable reliable, high-capacity growth of duckweed irrespective of seasons.
In the paper a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) approach was applied to a pilot-scale duckweed cultivation system to provide insight into wastewater hydrodynamics to support further development and optimisation.
The study highlights the value of in-depth evaluation of the fluid flow using CFD, as a strategy to improve design of duckweed cultivation systems.
Find the full publication (open access) published in the journal Aquacultural Engineering at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860923000626