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Utilization of seawater for cost-effective cultivation and harvesting of Scenedesmus obliquus

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Abstract

Microalgae hold great promise as a source of biofuels and biochemicals. The main obstacles to their industrial application are the high cultivation and downstream costs related to media and harvesting. In the work, we explored the multiple potentials of seawater to address key issues relating to the cultivation of Scenedesmus obliquus. Seawater can sufficiently replace some of the key elements in BG11 medium such as MgSO4, CaCl2, and NaCO3, and its use can significantly reduce the quantity of water required for the preparation of culture media. Among our results, the total chlorophyll content in cells grown in modified BG11 using 10 % (v/v) seawater was increased 1.47-fold without sacrificing biomass or lipid production. More than 70 % of the total algal biomass was auto-flocculated within one hour when cells were grown in seawater-supplemented media, which compares very favorably with a yield of only 3 % from cells grown in BG11.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Advanced Biomass R&D Center (ABC) of the Global Frontier Project funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (ABC-2010-0029728).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Biomass R&D Center, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Joo-Young Jung & Ji-Won Yang

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Hansol Lee, Won-Sub Shin, Min-Gyu Sung, Jong-Hee Kwon & Ji-Won Yang

Authors
  1. Joo-Young Jung
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  2. Hansol Lee
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  3. Won-Sub Shin
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  4. Min-Gyu Sung
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  5. Jong-Hee Kwon
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  6. Ji-Won Yang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jong-Hee Kwon or Ji-Won Yang.

Additional information

J-Y. Jung and H. Lee contributed equally to this work.

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Jung, JY., Lee, H., Shin, WS. et al. Utilization of seawater for cost-effective cultivation and harvesting of Scenedesmus obliquus . Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 38, 449–455 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-014-1284-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-014-1284-4

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