Mass Cultivation of Microalgae: II. A Large Species Pulsing Blue Light Concept

If mass cultivation of photoautotrophic microalgae is to gain momentum and find its place in the new “green future”, exceptional optimizations to reduce production costs must be implemented. Issues related to illumination should therefore constitute the main focus, since it is the availability of photons in time and space that drives synthesis of biomass. Further, artificial illumination (e.g., LEDs) is needed to transport enough photons into dense algae cultures contained in large photobioreactors. In the present research project, we employed short-term O(2) production and 7-day batch cultivation experiments to evaluate the potential to reduce illumination light energy by applying blue flashing light to cultures of large and small diatoms. Our results show that large diatom cells allow more light penetration for growth compared to smaller cells. PAR (400–700 nm) scans yielded twice as much biovolume-specific absorbance for small biovolume (avg. 7070 μm(3)) than for large biovolume (avg. 18,703 μm(3)) cells. The dry weight (DW) to biovolume ratio was 17% lower for large than small cells, resulting in a DW specific absorbance that was 1.75 times higher for small cells compared to large cells. Blue 100 Hz square flashing light yielded the same biovolume production as blue linear light in both the O(2) production and batch experiments at the same maximum light intensities. We therefore suggest that, in the future, more focus should be placed on researching optical issues in photobioreactors, and that cell size and flashing blue light should be central in this.