Large-scale cultivation of Spirulina in a floating horizontal photobioreactor without aeration or an agitation device

A low-cost floating photobioreactor (PBR) without the use of aeration and/or an agitation device, in which carbon was supplied in the form of bicarbonate and only wave energy was utilized for mixing, was developed in our previous study. Scaling up is a common challenge in the practical application of PBRs and has not yet been demonstrated for this new design. To fill this gap, cultivation of Spirulina platensis was conducted in this study. The results demonstrated that S. platensis had the highest productivity at 0.3 mol L⁻¹ sodium bicarbonate, but the highest carbon utilization (104 ± 2.6%) was obtained at 0.1 mol L⁻¹. Culture of Spirulina aerated with pure oxygen resulted in only minor inhibition of growth, indicating that its productivity will not be significantly reduced even if dissolved oxygen is accumulated to a high level due to intermittent mixing resulting from the use of wave energy. In cultivation using a floating horizontal photobioreactor at the 1.0 m² scale, the highest biomass concentration of 2.24 ± 0.05 g L⁻¹ was obtained with a culture depth of 5.0 cm and the highest biomass productivity of 18.9 g m⁻² day⁻¹ was obtained with a depth of 10.0 cm. This PBR was scaled up to 10 m² (1000 L) with few challenges; biomass concentration and productivity during ocean testing were little different than those at the 1.0 m² (100 L) scale. However, the larger PBR had an apparent carbon utilization efficiency of 45.0 ± 2.8%, significantly higher than the 39.4 ± 0.9% obtained at the 1 m² scale. These results verified the ease of scaling up floating horizontal photobioreactors and showed their great potential in commercial applications.

     

Bicarbonate-based carbon capture and algal production system on ocean with floating inflatable-membrane photobioreactor

This study aims to develop a low-cost microalgae culture system which uses a simple closed vessel as photobioreactor to save manufacturing cost, waves for mixing to save energy cost, and high concentration of bicarbonate for carbon supply to avoid the high cost of CO₂-bubbling pipeline construction on the ocean as well as to control pH by buffering the effect of bicarbonate/carbonate. To test this idea, the alkalihalophilic cyanobacterium Euhalothece sp. was cultured with 1.0 M NaHCO₃ in small-scale floating photobioreactors (PBRs) on 10-cm-high artificial waves at first. The final biomass concentration was up to 0.91 and 1.47 g L^?1 for indoor and outdoor cultures, respectively. However, the recorded dissolved oxygen (DO) was occasionally over-saturated (> 500% of air saturation), indicating mass transfer problem. k _L a in these PBRs with different culture depth was measured then, and the results showed great variation, from 0.13 to 4.87 h^?1. At the scale of 1.0 m², this floating PBR was made with low-cost membrane and inflatable design. It was placed on the ocean surface and mixed with natural waves. Biomass concentration of 1.63 g L^?1 and productivity of 8.27 g m^?2 day^?1 were obtained in this culture. With these results, the feasibility of a low-cost microalgae culture system was proven, which could systematically reduce the cost of photobioreactor manufacturing, operating, and maintenance.