Optimization of optical sensors for phytoplankton bioreactor

工业浮游生物公司是一家加拿大生物反应器生产商，总部位于不列颠哥伦比亚省的维多利亚。他们的 藻类生物反应器是研究、水产养殖和生物技术的交钥匙解决方案。通过自动化，这些 生物反应器消除了培养藻类的大部分重复性工作，藻类是一种必需的食物。 贝类水产养殖的来源，如贻贝和牡蛎。触摸屏控制和实时绘图 培养条件允许操作员快速评估培养物，并根据需要进行改变以优化 输出的. 一个内置在流水线中的光学传感器被用来测量 反应器该传感器是其控制系统中反馈的关键工具，该控制系统调节光照水平并指示 当收获和用营养物再填充培养物时，应该发生。电流传感器基于 测量浮游植物密度增加时透光率的下降。它有几个局限性 特别是在可以准确评估的浮游生物浓度范围方面。 我们建议通过电子设备升级，增加新的 传感器和一种新的测量和信号处理策略的基础上，多角度散射光检测。 传感器外壳将重新设计，以适应使用3D打印原型的这些修改 发展随着该项目的成功完成，我们有兴趣为该产品申请专利， 为测量生物反应器中的浮游植物密度而量身定制的有效光密度传感器。

Industrial Plankton Inc. is a Canadian bioreactor producer headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia. Their algae bioreactors are a turn-key solution for research, aquaculture, and biotech. Through automation, these bioreactors eliminate the majority of repetitive tasks involved in culturing algae, which are an essential food source for aquaculture of shellfish such as mussels and oysters. Touchscreen controls and realtime graphing of the culture conditions allow operators to quickly assess a culture, and make changes as necessary to optimize the output. An optical sensor built into the flow lines is used to measure the concentration of phytoplankton inside the reactor. The sensor is a key tool for feedback in their control system which regulates light levels and dictates when harvesting and re-charging of the culture with nutrients should occur. The current sensor is based upon measuring the decline in light transmission as phytoplankton densities increase. It has several limitations especially with respect to the range of plankton concentrations that can be accurately assessed. We propose to significantly improve their detector system through electronics upgrades, addition of new sensors and a new measurement and signal processing strategy based on multi-angle scattered light detection. The sensor housing will be re-designed to accommodate these modifications using 3D printing for prototype development. With successful completion of this project we are interested in patenting this product as a cost effective optical density sensor tailored towards measuring phytoplankton densities in bio-reactors.