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Engineering solutions for open microalgae mass cultivation and realistic indoor simulation of outdoor environments

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Abstract

Microalgae could become an important renewable source for chemicals, food, and energy if process costs can be reduced. In the past 60 years, relevant factors in open outdoor mass cultivation of microalgae were identified and elaborate solutions regarding bioprocesses and bioreactors were developed. An overview of these solutions is presented. Since the cost of most microalgal products from current mass cultivation systems is still prohibitively high, further development is required. The application of complex computational techniques for cost-effective process and reactor development will become more important if experimental validation of simulation results can easily be achieved. Due to difficulties inherent to outdoor experimentation, it can be useful to conduct validation experiments indoors. Considerations and approaches for realistic indoor reproduction of the most important environmental conditions in microalgae cultivation experiments—light, temperature, and substance concentrations, are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this work was provided by the Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Media, Energy and Technology (Munich, Germany), the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts (Munich, Germany) and Airbus Group (Leiden, The Netherlands). NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory/Global Monitoring Division—Radiation (G-RAD, Boulder, CO, USA) is acknowledged for providing SURFRAD data. The authors thank Skye Thomas-Hall, Peer Schenk (The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia), and Thomas Brück (Industrial Biocatalysis, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany) for fruitful discussions on microalgae research.

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    Andreas Christoph Apel & Dirk Weuster-Botz

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Apel, A.C., Weuster-Botz, D. Engineering solutions for open microalgae mass cultivation and realistic indoor simulation of outdoor environments. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 38, 995–1008 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-015-1363-1

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