Novel photobioreactor design for the culture of Dunaliella tertiolecta – Impact of color in the growth of microalgae

Abstract

Microalgae are affected by the amount of light received. This parameter can be controlled by changing the lightsource and altering the reactor used for their growth. In this study, the effect of different colors of light was analyzedin the growth of Dunaliella tertiolecta, observing that blue lighting systems reached a biomass 10 times superior tothe one generated by orange lightning systems. This growth effect was seen in a novel tubular internally illuminatedphotobioreactor. In this photobioreactor, the blue reactor produced 1.7 times the biomass of the red reactor, with theparticularity that the latter showed an oscillating behavior in its growth. From irradiance models, the light dispersioncoefficient is higher than the absorption coefficient when using red light. In contrast, with blue light, the value of thescattering coefficient is almost null.