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CT 7/97 Industrial-size photobioreactors
CHEMTECH
July 1997
CHEMTECH
1997
,
27 
(7), 43-49.
Copyright © 1997 by the American Chemical Society.
Industrial-size photobioreactors
Efficient large-volume photobioreactors are needed to exploit the photosynthetic microorganisms used for making food products. Scale-up problems associated with proper light distribution within the reactor are addressed with this novel reactor design.
James C. OgbonnaHideo Tanaka
Photosynthetic microorganisms can be engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, chemical intermediates(
1
,
2
), and clean energy (e.g., hydrogen) (
3
). They also fix atmospheric carbon dioxide (
4
)--an importantconsideration as increased levels of carbon dioxide are linked to global warming. It is expected that, inthe future, photosynthetic microorganisms will play a larger role than higher plants in photosyntheticcarbon dioxide fixation because they have higher photosynthetic rates per unit biomass and, if optimized, can be cultivated in a compact space (
5
).The potential of microalgae as a food staple in the human diet has been investigated over many years inseveral countries (
6 
). In Japan, algal biomass (e.g.,
Chlorella
and
Spirulina
sp.) is producedcommercially, primarily as health foods. Protein and chlorophyll contents are important parameters forassessing the quality of an algal biomass. Because no efficient large-scale photobioreactors are yetavailable, open cultivation ponds are used for almost all commercial algae production. However, it isdifficult to obtain high productivity in open ponds because the temperature and light intensity varythroughout the day and year. In addition, open ponds require a large surface area, and problems withcontamination arise. Because of the prohibitively expensive price of land in Japan, almost all algae isproduced in Southeast Asian countries. Even so, the prices of microalgal biomass and alga-derived
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CT 7/97 Industrial-size photobioreactors
compounds are still very high. The development of large-scale tank-type photobioreactors is critical forthe production of 
Chlorella
and other algal products in Japan. To fully exploit the potentials of photosynthetic cells, efficient photobioreactors must be developed.Many closed photobioreactors have been used or proposed for the cultivation of microalgae; the mostcommon are vertical or horizontal tubular (
7 
), helical (serpentine) (
8
), and inclined or horizontal thin-panel (
9
) photobioreactors. The critical design requirement in these photobioreactors is to supply lightefficiently by maximizing the illumination surface-to-volume ratio of the reaction. As a result, tubes areoften very narrow or the panels very thin. Some of the photobioreactors that work well in the laboratorymay not work as well when scaled up because the surface-to-volume ratio decreases, causing poor lightdistribution inside the reactor. To produce alga-derived materials at competitive prices, efficient large-scale photobioreactors must be designed. We have designed and constructed a photobioreactor for thelarge-scale cultivation of photosynthetic cells of 
Chlorella
sp. in which scale-up is a primary designcriterion.
Growth index
One important step in designing and optimizing photobioreactors is the mathematical modeling of photosynthetic cell growth. Classic models such as that of Monod are based on the specific growth rateof the cell (
10
,
11
). In most of the growth kinetics and photosynthetic cell growth models, specific ratesduring the exponential growth phase are used as growth parameters (
12
). However, during high-celldensity batch cultivation of photosynthetic cells, there are distinct sequential growth phases. The cellgrowth rate during a growth phase, which has an overwhelming influence on culture productivity, wouldbe a good index for process design and optimization.As a first step in the photobioreactor design, we investigated the relative significance of the exponentialand the linear growth rates during light-limited batch cultivation of photosynthetic cells using varioustypes and sizes of photobioreactors. The results indicated that there was not good correlation betweenthe specific growth rates and the linear growth rates or between the specific growth rates and the finalcell concentrations during the cultivation of 
Chlorella pyrenoidosa
C-212 and
Spirulina platensis
M-135cells (
13
). However, regardless of the type and size of the photobioreactor, we observed good correlationbetween the linear growth rates and the final cell concentrations for
C. pyrenoidosa
and
S. platensis
.We also developed a mathematical model that could explain the existence of the various growth phasesduring the light-limited batch cultivation. The model predicts that the linear growth phase is longer thanthe exponential growth phase under various conditions (
13
). Thus, the linear growth rate is a bettergrowth index than the specific growth rate and was used as the growth index in this study.
Light inside the photobioreactor
After determining which index to use to measure the cell growth, the next step was to develop an indexfor the quantitative evaluation of light conditions inside photobioreactors. Various light parameters have
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CT 7/97 Industrial-size photobioreactors
been used to assess light conditions inside photobioreactors, and the modeling of photosynthetic cellgrowth has often been based on parameters such as the incident (
14
) and average (
15
) light intensities.However, in models with incident light intensities, very low cell concentrations are used, and it isusually assumed that all the cells receive the incident light intensity. In practical culture systems,however, high cell concentrations are desirable for increased productivity and reduced harvesting costs.The concept of mean light intensity is an improvement over the incident light intensity but does notconsider light distribution within the photobioreactor. We investigated the reliability of the incident andthe average light intensities as indices of light conditions in cuboidal photobioreactors of various sizes(
16 
). Although photobioreactors of the same size had similar relationships between the linear cell growthrates and the incident or average light intensities, we found no correlation between the linear growthrates and the above light parameters when data from photobioreactors of different sizes were considered.This finding implies that the apparently good correlation reported between the photosynthetic growthrates and the incident light intensities is probably the result of a single photobioreactor being used ineach of those studies (
14
). The incident and the average light intensities are therefore not good indices of light supply efficiency of photobioreactors and cannot be used for meaningful evaluation of lightconditions inside photobioreactors of different sizes.According to Einstein's law of photochemical equivalence, the photosynthesis rate (and hence the cellgrowth rate) should be proportional to the rate of light energy absorbed by the cells. During the lineargrowth phase, the cell concentration in the photobioreactor is fairly high, so depending on the depth of the reactor, almost all the supplied light energy is absorbed by the growing cells. The total light energysupplied per unit volume of photobioreactor (E
t
 /V) therefore would be a better measure of photobioreactor performance than the incident or the average light intensities. The relationships betweenthe E
t
 /V and the linear growth rates are shown in Figure 1. Although the results reveal a nearly linearrelationship, the data are scattered near the curve. At a given E
t
 /V, the linear growth rates decreased withan increase in depth of the photobioreactors, indicating that the light distribution inside the reactor mustbe considered in the rational design and scale-up of photosynthetic processes. Compared with the fairlyhomogenous distribution of light inside a very shallow photobioreactor, there is a distinct spatialheterogeneity of light intensities inside the deep photobioreactors.
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