Light Transfer in Photobioreactors for CO2 Capture and Biofuel Production

Laurent Pilon, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles

Industrial and developing nations face the formidable challenge to meet ever expanding energy needs without further impacting climate and the environment. These conditions call for much greater reliance on a combination of fossil fuel-free energy sources and on new technologies for capturing and converting CO2.

This seminar will present how photosynthetic microalgae and cyanobacteria, grown in photobioreactors, can be used to mitigate CO2 emissions and produce biofuels and other added-value products in a sustainable manner. It will emphasize the importance of light transfer in designing and controlling the photobiological process. It will also present experimental measurements of the spectral absorption and scattering cross-sections and scattering phase function of selected microalgae in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The seminar will also discuss experimental demonstrations on control incident light intensity and spectra to maximize microalgae CO2 capture and biomass production in benchtop photobioreactors. Finally, it will propose design rules for scaling up the technology to efficient industrial-scale outdoor photobioreactors.

Laurent Pilon received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2002. He then joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA where he is now Full Professor. His research group is engaged in a wide range of interdisciplinary research projects at the intersection between interfacial and transport phenomena, material science, and biology for sustainable energy conversion, storage, and efficiency  technologies.  He  is  the  recipient  of  the  U.S.  National  Science  Foundation CAREER Award, the 2008 Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the 2009 Young Scientist Award in  Radiative  Transfer  from  the  Journal  of  Quantitative  Spectroscopy  and  Radiative Transfer. He was elected Senior Member of SPIE in 2011. He also received several teaching awards from UCLA.