Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 24, 2026

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Towards the design of energy-efficient bubble clusters and operation strategies for process control in sonochemical
Ferenc Kubicsek1, Sára Molnár1, Dániel Nagy1
1Department of Hydrodynamic Systems, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Műegyetem rkp. 3., H-1111 Budapest, Hungary.
None:
Energy efficiency and process control are critical challenges in scaling sonochemical applications. To address this, we introduce a numerical optimisation framework focused on designing pre-seeded bubble clusters driven by impulse ultrasound to minimise energy consumption. The methodology efficiently handles the large parameter space (bubble sizes) by combining fast, reduced-order modelling of spherical bubbles and chemical kinetics with expensive multi-phase hydrodynamic simulations (ALPACA). The technique is demonstrated on two test cases: ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2) synthesis, to analyse the effects of different reaction mechanisms. In both cases, the optimal size distribution of a chain of 16 bubbles is found with as few as three multi-phase flow simulations.
Related Concept Videos
Bioreactor Controls-II
Bioreactor Design and Operational System
Bioreactor Controls-I
Bioreactor Controls-III
Scale-Up Processes
Upstream Processing

