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Development of thin-film photo-bioreactor and its application to outdoor culture of microalgae

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Abstract

Photosynthetic microalgae have received much attention as a microbial source of diverse useful biomaterials through CO2 fixation and various types of photo-bioreactors have been developed for efficient microalgal cultivation. Herein, we developed a novel thin-film photo-bioreactor, which was made of cast polypropylene film, considering outdoor mass cultivation. To develop optimal design of photo-bioreactor, we tested performance of three shapes of thin-film photo-bioreactors (flat, horizontal and vertical tubular shapes) and various parts in the bioreactor. Collectively, vertical tubular bioreactor with H/D ratio 6:1 and cylindrical stainless steel spargers showed the most outstanding performance. Furthermore, the photo-bioreactor was successfully applied to the cultivation of other microalgae such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Chlorella vulgaris. The scalability of photo-bioreactor was confirmed by gradually increasing culture volume from 4 to 25 L and the biomass productivity of each reactor was quite consistent (0.05–0.07 g/L/day) during the cultivation of H. pluvialis under indoor and outdoor conditions. Especially, we also achieved dry cell weight of 4.64 g/L and astaxanthin yield of 218.16 mg/L through long-term cultivation (100 days) under outdoor condition in 15 L photo-bioreactor using Haematococcus pluvialis, which means that the astaxanthin yield from outdoor cultivation is equal or superior to that obtained from controlled indoor condition. Therefore, these results indicate that we can apply this approach to development of optimal photo-bioreactor for the large-scale culture of microalgae and production of useful biomaterials under outdoor condition.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support by grants from Korea CCS R and D Center (Grant no. 2011-0031997) as main project that support this work and 2008 NRL (National Research Lab.) Project (Grant no. R0A-2008-000-20078-0) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korean government of the Republic of Korea. This work has been also supported by the Korea District Heating Corporation as a part of the Project of “Development of the technology for CO2 reduction in flue gas and biodiesel production by microalgae using closed system” (1003542011S037) in “New Renewable Energy Technology R and D” project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Clean Chemical Engineering Systems, Korea University, Seoul, 136-701, Republic of Korea

    Jae Jun Yoo & Jaoon Y. H. Kim

  2. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, 136-713, Republic of Korea

    Seung Phill Choi & Sang Jun Sim

  3. Research Institute, Korea District Heating Corp, 186 Bundang-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea

    Won Seok Chang

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  1. Jae Jun Yoo
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  2. Seung Phill Choi
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  3. Jaoon Y. H. Kim
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  4. Won Seok Chang
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  5. Sang Jun Sim
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Correspondence to Sang Jun Sim.

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Yoo, J.J., Choi, S.P., Kim, J.Y.H. et al. Development of thin-film photo-bioreactor and its application to outdoor culture of microalgae. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 36, 729–736 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-013-0898-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-013-0898-2

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