The slow development of microalgal biotechnology is due to the failure in the
design of large-scale photobioreactors (PBRs) where light energy is efficiently utilized. In
this work, both the quality and the amount of light reaching a given point of the PBR were
determined and correlated with cell density, light path length, and PBR geometry. This was
made for two different geometries of the downcomer of an airlift PBR using optical fiber
technology that allows to obtain information about quantitative and qualitative aspects of
light patterns. This is important since the ability of microalgae to use the energy of photons
is different, depending on the wavelength of the radiation. The results show that the circular
geometry allows a more efficient light penetration, especially in the locations with a higher
radial coordinate (r) when compared to the plane geometry; these observations were
confirmed by the occurrence of a higher fraction of illuminated volume of the PBR for this
geometry. An equation is proposed to correlate the relative light intensity with the
penetration distance for both geometries and different microalgae cell concentrations. It was
shown that the attenuation of light intensity is dependent on its wavelength, cell
concentration, geometry of PBR, and the penetration distance of light.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT
