I found various amounts of nutrients to cultivate spirulina, please i need your advice, can you tell me what is the most economic amount for each nutrient to cultivate spirulina in a basin of 13500 Liter?
Thank you
Spirulina is an aquatic micro-organism often referred to as an algae, though it more closely resembles bacteria. It is used as a food supplement to combat malnutrition. 1 gram of spirulina is said to be as nutritious as 100g of spinach or carrots, and is cheaper. It has an extremely high protein content, with 60-70% of its dry weight consisting of a balanced mix of various essential amino acids. Further it is very rich in beta carotene (to produce vitamin A), iron, vitamin B12, ganna-linolenic acid and other micronutrients. It has no cell wall and is therefore very easy to digest.
Spirulina has very high micronutrient content, is easy and cheap to produce locally. It is therefore a very realistic and also sustainable solution to the problem of malnutrition as opposed to food fortification or distribution programs. Fortification programs try to improve the quality of food by for example adding vitamin A and D were to milk and margarine. These are not always effective since this food is usually not available to the people in rural areas who suffer most.
Spirulina grows in solutions of specific minerals with the correct chemical balance and a pH of 8-11. There are various different recipes for this, depending on the budget available and the conditions. It needs a minimum of 20˚C to grow substantially, though a temperature of 35-37˚C is most effective.
Spirulina is most nutritious in its wet form. However this lasts at most for a few days if refrigerated, and only a few hours at room temperature. Hence if it needs to be transported or stored it must be dried. If dried and packaged well it can be stored for at least a year without losing nutritional value. However if dried it acquires an unpleasant smell and taste, and is inconvenient to use. It can then also be combined with various other food products or simply packaged on its own.The production of Spirulina requires manufacturing of a tank. The size of this depends on the scale of production, and the number of tanks. 1 tank of 18m2 produces approximately 150g of Spirulina per day.
Production and nutritive value of Spirulina platensis in reduced cost media
Abstract
This study aimed to provide a cost effective medium to large scale production of Spirulina platensis. This intention was implemented by substituting all the nutrients present in Zarrouk’s medium (SM) with cheaper and locally available commercial fertilizers and chemicals. The Reduced Cost medium contained single super phosphate (SSP), commercial sodium bicarbonate, Muriate of potash (MOP) and crude sea-salt, (Syahat salt). Four grades of nitrogen concentrations representing 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% of SM nitrogen concentration (29.42 mM-N) were taken from ammonium nitrate (Treatments 1–4) or urea (Treatments 5–8) respectively, for testing. The alga was grown for 33 days at 30 ± 2 °C, pH 9, 30 μEm2 s−1 irradiance. The growth characteristics (maximum biomass Xm, cell productivity Px, specific growth rate μm and chlorophyll concentration), and biochemical composition (proteins, carbohydrates and lipids) of the alga grown in these media were compared with that cultivated in SM. Significant differences in the growth parameters and biochemical composition were observed for the different nitrogen sources and concentrations. The results revealed that S. platensis could utilize ammonium nitrate most efficiently and that growth was enhanced with increasing the concentrations of ammonium nitrate giving maximum biomass at 0.353 g/L (Treatment 3). Further increasing the concentration limited growth. The growth parameters in urea showed a significant decrease associated with increasing urea concentrations. The maximum biomass, chlorophyll and protein yield (0.813 ± 0.018 mg/L, 0.0685 ± 0.0024 μg/L and 52.62%, respectively) were recorded using Treatment 3 which was comparable with that of SM (0.840 ± 0.008 mg/L, 0.0701 ± 0.0089 μg/L and 52.95%, respectively). The results indicated that the newly prepared medium can be used profitably for large-scale mass production of protein-rich Spirulina and yields similar performance with cost effective to Zarrouk’s medium. Source ; The Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research, Volume 38, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 51-57
I would recommend you to contact Mr. Ari Maayan
He has great experience on mass cultivation of Spirulina in India.
Best. IB