Invited Plenary Speaker: Peter Farber, a Professor of Fluid Mechanics at IMH - Institute of Modelling and High Performance Computing, Hochschule Niederrhein - University of Applied Sciences, Krefeld, Germany
Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations of Biotechnological Processes
Industrial biotechnology is one of the key enabling technologies (KET) of the European Union. In the view of the European Commission the KETs have applications in multiple industries and help tackle societal challenges. Countries and regions that fully exploit KETs will be at the forefront of creating advanced and sustainable economies. Commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes offer a great flexibility to model complex 3D geometries. They have many physical models on board, nevertheless biotechnological or even bioelectrochemical reactions are not included. In this talk, I discuss three examples of the application and extension of the Ansys Fluent commercial CFD code to simulate biotechnological or bioelectrochemical models done in our institute.
The first project is concerned with the biofilm on the anode of a Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) in a mixed culture enriched with the electroactive model organism Geobacter sulfurreducens, which is treated as a conductive material. In a MFC electrons are released by the bacteria during the oxidation of acetate and conducted to the anode. Besides the stationary 3D Navier-Stokes equation for fluid flow and the species balance equation for acetate in the water and in the biofilm, the model consists of a model for the species mass fraction of acetate at the boundary between water and biofilm. Furthermore, we added a sink for acetate as a source for electrons and a stationary electric charge density balance equation in the biofilm. Using this extended commercial CFD code allowed us to analyse the bioelectrochemical conversion of acetate and current production in a MFC in order to optimise engineering parameter of the MFC like geometry of the underlying carbon fibre textile and the geometry of the demonstration reactor.
In the second project we model and simulate the calorimetric ampule technique. For calorimetric ampule technique the reaction vessels are filled with cell suspensions and the heat exchange with a defined environment is measured under nearly constant temperatures. The calorimetric ampule techniques have found several applications until now. Among them are process optimization in the industrial biotechnology (fast analysis of factors influencing growth or a specific product generation), sterility testing in the pharmaceutic and food industry and activity determination in complex bioprocesses (e.g. biogas). It could be shown that it is not always possible to conclude from the caloric data to the metabolism of the cells. Science acted on this assumption so far. The models until now are however simplified, so are the bacteria modelled as a soluble substance and sedimentation is not represented. IMH now wants to develop models without these simplifications. The status of the project and first results will be discussed.
Finally, the third project deals with bio-solar cells. The demand for alternative energy sources rises from year to year, while the carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced. The power generation with plants and microorganisms, which are producing energy sustainably, are upcoming alternatives. Bio-solar cell are a new means of generating electricity biotechnologically. Algae, e.g. Chlamydomonas rheinhardtii, are kept in a small enclosure and the electrons released during photosynthesis and respiration are transferred to the anode. Currently the movement of the algae is modelled and simulated. The status of the project and first results are displayed and discussed.
About the author:
Professor Peter Farber earned his Dr.-Ing. at RWTH Aachen University in the field of heat transfer in pebble beds up 1100 °C. Since then the analysis and optimisation of fluid flow with heat and mass transfer is his major field of research interest. During late eights 80’s and early 90’s he was working for the textile finishing machinery company Ramisch-Kleinewefers, Krefeld, Germany, where he served as a head of machinery development department. In 1992 he joined Hochschule Niederrhein, Krefeld, Germany as professor in processes and machinery of textile finishing and as a professor of fluid mechanics in 2002. His research focuses on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) since he joined Hochschule Niederrhein. Firstly, he applied CFD into textile finishing and later on various industrial topics. Professor Farber founded together with his colleague Professor Ueberholz the IMH - Institute of Modelling and High-Performance Computing in 2005 and was head of the institute from 2005 to 2016. He has more than 100 publications and presentations. Application of CFD to biotechnology is now his major research area.
Professor Farber website can be found under this link
