Abstract
In context of the global climate change, microalgae processes are gaining momentum as a biotechnological tool for direct fixation and valorization of greenhouse gases. Algae have the metabolic capacity to photosynthetically convert CO2 into high value products, such as food additives, under economic boundary conditions. High cost, commercial flat panel gas-lift bioreactors for microalgae cultivation at laboratory scale provide either small volumes or no sterile operation, which limits academic research. This brief report presents initial data for a new type of sterile operating flat panel gas-lift bioreactor with a unique asymmetrical U-shape. It utilizes automatable process control technologies that adhere to industrial standards to enhance data reproducibility and aid industrial scale up. The practicability was demonstrated using a Chlorella sorokiniana cultivation, which showed the typical growth behavior. Due to the sophisticated implemented control engineering technology, pivotal parameters as pH and temperature can be determined within a range of ±0.1 units, which was confirmed experimentally. The new flat panel gas-lift photobioreactor presented in this brief report fills the technology gap at laboratory scale with an autoclavable volume of 7.2 L. Moreover, it is easy to rebuild by means of the hereby provided blueprint, while exhibiting a six-fold cost reduction compared to commercially available flat panel photobioreactors.
Highlights
Excessive anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the main cause of the greenhouse gas effect that results in progressive global warming
The validation of sterile operations is critical to enable algae process design and optimization for the food and pharma industry. The photobioreactor in this brief report was designed in a manner that it fits into a conventional laboratory autoclave
In contrast to commonly utilized algae cultivation media, which conventionally contain inorganic C- and N-sources, the sterility was tested under adverse heterotrophic conditions, using glucose containing yeast nitrogen base (YNB) media
Summary
Excessive anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the main cause of the greenhouse gas effect that results in progressive global warming. Depending on the selected algae strain and its respective cultivations conditions, microalgae biomass contains varying concentrations of multiple value adding products such as sugars, lipids, proteins, pigments, vitamins, or extracellular polymers (Chisti, 2007; Griesbeck and Kirchmayr, 2012; Woortman et al, 2020a). Aviation biofuel production using oleaginous microalgae like Microchloropsis salina (Chew et al, 2017; Woortman et al, 2020a,b) These aforementioned oil producing microorganisms can accumulate up to 60% of their dry biomass as lipids with substantially higher oil yields per hectar than currently favored feedstock (Chisti, 2007). Its unique asymmetrical U-shape prevents formation of dead zones, which are induced by microalgae
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