The difference in effective light penetration may explain the superiority in photosynthetic efficiency of attached cultivation over the conventional open pond for microalgae

BACKGROUND: The ‘attached cultivation’ technique for microalgae production, combining the immobilized biofilm technology with proper light dilution strategies, has shown improved biomass production and photosynthetic efficiency over conventional open-pond suspended cultures. However, how light is transferred and distributed inside the biofilm has not been clearly defined yet. RESULTS: In this research, the growth, photosynthetic oxygen evolution, and specific growth rate for microalgal cells in both open-pond and attached cultivation were studied to determine the effective light penetration at different phases of the cultivation. As a result, the light conditions inside the culture broth as well as the biofilm were revealed for the first time. Results showed that outdoor, in a conventional 20-cm deep open pond, all of the algal cells were fully illuminated in the first 3 days of cultivation. As the biomass concentration increased from day 4 to day 10, the light could only effectively penetrate 45.5% of the open-pond depth, and then effective light penetration gradually decreased to 31.1% at day 31, when the biomass density reached a maximum value of 0.45 g L(−1) or 90 g m(−2). In the attached cultivation system, under nitrogen-replete condition, almost 100% of the immobilized algal cells inside the biofilm were effectively illuminated from day 0 through day 10 when the biomass density increased from 8.8 g m(−2) to 107.6 g m(−2). CONCLUSION: Higher light penetration efficiency might be the reason why, using attached cultivation, observed values for photosynthetic efficiency were higher than those recorded in conventional open-pond suspended cultures.