Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Development Of A Biomass Transducer For Automated Microalgal Bioreactors, Amar Shivaram Hegde

LSU Master's Theses

A highly sensitive miniaturized biomass transducer is necessary for continuous and reliable monitoring of the microalgal biomass in a computer controlled, automated microalgal bioreactor. Previous known methods to determine microalgal biomass applicable in these bioreactors are based on single wavelength turbidimetric or fluorescence. The objectives of this research were to (1) determine the light absorption characteristics of some commercially applicable microalgae in the electromagnetic wavelength range of 200-800 nm (2) design and construct a new miniaturized biomass transducer (3) process the transducer output to correlate with the biomass. Wavelength sensitivity analysis was conducted on the commercially important microalgal species - …