The aim of this work was to study the light/dark (L/D) cycle in raceway ponds (RWPs) by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method via determining the hydrodynamics of culture media and cell trajectories. The effects of paddlewheel rotational speed and flow-deflector baffles installation on the L/D cycle were analyzed. The results indicated that, the L/D cycles of microalgae cells decreased with the increase of the paddlewheel rotational speeds, when the paddlewheel rotational speeds ranged from 5 to 12 rpm. In addition, the installation of the flow-deflector baffles in RWPs can greatly increase the light time and the ratio of light time to L/D cycle for microalgae cells. The study provided an effective method to characterize the L/D cycles in RWPs, and may have important implications for designing the effective large-scale microalgae culture system. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.