I am planning to cultivate algae in waste water for the omega oil production. I heard about different cultivation systems like open/closed ponds, photo bio-reactor, feremeter,etc.
Eg: a, Algal ponds of 0.5 ha and 1 ha are part of the first commercial-scale algal biofuel facility in the United States at Sapphire Energy's Integrated Algal BioRefinery. They cover an area 400 metres wide by 1,600 metres long at a location near Columbus, New Mexico.
b, A single 1-million-litre paddle-wheel driven pond from the Columbus facility.
c, A pilot-scale flat panel photobioreactor developed at the Laboratory for Algae Research and Biotechnology at Arizona State University in Mesa (image courtesy of Q. Hu).
d, A commercial-scale tubular photobioreactor designed and constructed by IGV and operated by Salata in Germany (image courtesy of C. Grewe).
e, An industrial-scale fermentation tank for heterotrophic cultivation of microalgae at Martek Biosciences, part of DSM in Heerlen, the Netherlands (image courtesy of D. Dong).
Which is the best method to cultivate algae in waste water in LAB scale & pilot plant scale?
I am not familiar with the field I am inviting valuable suggestion from experts .
You must accept that there is no magic formula, you have to put a focused purpose.
first choose the species of microalgae you want.
Perform a literature review of environmental variables affecting production and primary productivity of microalgae species that you want.
Cover as much of these demands in the laboratory and gradually scale them in the field. On the internet you will find many formulas of culture medium of the species you choose. Now compare if the macro-and microelements concencentracion match your chosen treated water.
makes several bioassays and compared at different concentrations and environmental variables behaves as your microalgae and so basic and you can get good results that will take you to scale your goals
Your question is far too broad to give you a good answer. The quality and use of the omega oil will set process requirements and must be the first criteria on which to design your process. i.e. the system for human nutrition will be completely different for oil for biofuels or somewhere in between. This will set reactor type and possible sources of nutrient etc. This will then lead you into reactor design and the reproducibility/quality of production. The organism you use will also affect all of this.. On top of this you will be throwing away or recycling substantial quantities of algae. what are you going to do with this? they are key cost/energy implications here.
To my knowledge there are no substantial commercial production of the omega oil using cultivated autotrophic algae. This is because the human nutrition market has been dominated by the heterotrophic production of martek and dominates the high value end of the market. The energetics don't add up for pure biofuel applications.
A clear understanding of the market and it requirements is therefore critical to success
.
Regards
bob
Best method is to build it in the form of a swimming pool so as to fool the algae into growing in spite of any method to stop them. ;)
In all seriousness, it depends on whether you want monocultures or not. Closed systems are more capital intensive, but provide precise control. Open systems, like swimming pools can develop minds of their own, but are less costly to build. Whether they are less costly to operate cant be answered because that is relative to productivity.
Alejandro started this off correctly. You need to understand your options-cash, space, products and move forward. Expecting/thinking you can get 1 para solution to this is quite naive and totally impossible given the lack of specifics of your request. You need to make some decisions and tailor the question down to something manageable
According to my research experience, Flat panel photo bio reactor is best choice for micro algae as well as lipid and biomass productivity(omega oil),
Algal ponds can be modelled and should be used as the first try. I am very sceptical about algal ponds.
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