“…This contrasts to the design of marine photobioreactors, which have been the subject of extensive and innovative work (for example, see Contreras et al, 1998;Hu et al, 1998;Matsunaga and Burgess, 1994). Many marine bac- (Karamanev and Nikolov, 1991) High biomass concentrations Little loss of cells through washout (Godia et al, 1987) Improved mass transfer Reduced media viscosity, increased differential velocity between media and cells (Wang et al, 1984) Advantageous partitioning effects Support can decrease inhibitory product concentration near cells (Wada et al, 1981) Increased product yield Energy is channelled away from biomass synthesis, into product synthesis (Sayles and Ollis, 1989) Increased product stability Liquid throughput reduces a product's residence time and therefore possibility of degradation (Okada et al, 1987) Integration with downstream processing Cells easily separated from media and products (Furusaki, 1988) Increased reaction selectivity Immobilization can affect membrane permeability (Watanabae et al, 1988) Flexibility in terms of fermentation protocol…”