Date of Award:

8-2012

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Byard D. Wood

Committee

Byard D. Wood

Committee

Clair J. Batty

Committee

Leijun Li

Committee

Barton L. Smith

Abstract

The USU BioEnergy Center has been successful in developing algae feedstocks for renewable biofuels and bioproducts. The concept is to utilize and maximize algae feedstocks for liquid transportation fuels, biomass for burning and digestion, and high value co-products. It is theorized that increasing the mixing in open and closed algal production systems improves the productivity of the algae culture. A raceway cultivation system was chosen to examine the phenomena of mixing. Vertical mixing will provide more uniform exposure to sunlight for all of the algae in the raceway. The main focus of this research was to increase vertical mixing. Delta wing vortex generator was selected as a viable source of creating vertical mixing. A series of experiments were carried out to study the mixing characteristics in a lab-scale raceway that was designed specifically for raceway hydrodynamics. Finally, the results were discussed and appropriate conclusions drawn.

Checksum

7c053a14eb9def43c7f79fbc8986e0eb

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on July 29, 2012.

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