Related papers: Optimal optical conditions for Microalgal producti…
Modelling the evolution process for the growth of microalgae in an artificial pond is a huge challenge, given the complex interaction between hydrodynamics and biological processes occurring across various timescales. In this paper, we…
Phototaxis is one of the most fundamental stimulus-response behaviors in biology wherein motile micro-organisms sense light gradients to swim towards the light source. Apart from single cell survival and growth, it plays a major role at the…
A fundamental issue that limits the efficiency of many photoelectrochemical systems is that the photon absorption length is typically much longer than the electron diffusion length. Various photon management schemes have been developed to…
We investigate optimization of an algal-bacterial consortium, where an exogenous control input modulates bacterial resource allocation between growth and synthesis of a resource that is limiting for algal growth. Maximization of algal…
We optimize multilayered anti-reflective coatings for photovoltaic devices, using modern evolutionary algorithms. We apply a rigorous methodology to show that a given structure, which is particularly regular, emerge spontaneously in a very…
Diffuse pollution in rural areas due to agricultural run-off is a widespread and difficult problem to address due to the vast areas affected. Drainage channels do receive these polluted waters, but its introduction in the conventional…
We devise an optimised bi-component multi-layered dielectric stack design to enhance the local irradiance for efficient photovoltaic upconversion materials. The field intensity profile throughout the photonic structure is numerically…
Nearly a decade ago it was discovered that the spherical cell body of the alga $Chlamydomonas~reinhardtii$ can act as a lens to concentrate incoming light onto the cell's membrane-bound photoreceptor and thereby affect phototaxis. Since…
Dormancy is an essential strategy for microorganisms to cope with environmental stress. However, global ecosystem models typically ignore microbial dormancy, resulting in major model uncertainties. To facilitate the consideration of…
High-throughput experimental techniques and bioinformatics tools make it possible to obtain reconstructions of the metabolism of microbial species. Combined with mathematical frameworks such as flux balance analysis, which assumes that…
The objective of this paper is to present the design, construction and operation of 3 full scale semi-closed, horizontal tubular photobioreactors (PBR) used to remove nutrients of a mixture of agricultural run-off (90%) and treated domestic…
Photosynthesis is central to Earth's biosphere and a prime candidate for sustaining complex life on habitable exoplanets, yet a thermodynamically consistent treatment of the work potential of stellar radiation at planetary surfaces is still…
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) production with phototrophic mixed cultures (PMCs) has been recently proposed. These cultures can be selected under the permanent presence of carbon and the PHA production can be enhanced in subsequent…
We present a coupled model describing growth of microalgae in a raceway cultivation process, accounting for hydrodynamics. Our approach combines a biological model (based on the Han model) and shallow water dynamics equations that model the…
Process optimization of photovoltaic devices is a time-intensive, trial and error endeavor, without full transparency of the underlying physics, and with user-imposed constraints that may or may not lead to a global optimum. Herein, we…
Light reflection plays a crucial role in a number of modern technologies. In this paper, analytical expressions for maximal reflected power in any direction and for any polarization are given for generic planar structures made of a single…
Photosynthesis converts sunlight into the chemical free energy that feeds the Earth's biosphere, yet at levels much lower than what thermodynamics would allow for. I propose here that photosynthesis is nevertheless thermodynamically…
We study the radiative decay, or fluorescence, of excitons in organic solar cells as a function of its geometrical parameters. Contrary to their non-radiative counterpart, fluorescence losses strongly depend on the environment. By properly…
In order to grow in any given environment, bacteria need to collect information about the medium composition and implement suitable growth strategies by adjusting their regulatory and metabolic degrees of freedom. In the standard sense,…
Novel photovoltaics, such as perovskites and perovskite-inspired materials, have shown great promise due to high efficiency and potentially low manufacturing cost. So far, solar cell R&D has mostly focused on achieving record efficiencies,…