Opportunities to improve the areal oil productivity of microalgae

Microalgae production in a biofilm photobioreactor

“…Typical strategies to accumulate high product concentrations in the microalgal cells are nutrient starvation. However, while most microalgae can obtain high photosynthetic efficiencies during growth under nutrient rich conditions and low light the efficiency typically drops during the product accumulation phase (Breuer et al 2015). Improvement of the photosynthetic efficiency during the product accumulation phase could therefore increase the economic potential of large scale algae cultivation.…”

“…On high intensity days with clear skies, the major part of sunlight is beam light. The intensity of these beams can be reduced by optical engineering (Breuer et al 2015), however, due to the changing solar angles, it is not possible to maximally benefit from this effect during the day and in different seasons. Therefore, in practice, sections of the photobioreactor surface will experience high intensity beam light while the other surfaces will only experience low intensity diffuse and reflected light.…”

“…The photosynthetic efficiency of microalgae varies between strains and culture conditions (Breuer et al 2015). Typical strategies to accumulate high product concentrations in the microalgal cells are nutrient starvation.…”

The fatter the better : selecting microalgae cells for outdoor lipid production

“…the fate of the photosynthetically absorbed energy inside the cells after nitrogen is depleted). This carbon partitioning has been described and modelled for the green microalgae Scenedesmus obliquus under continuous light (both wildtype and a starchless mutant) 99 . This model can describe the dynamics between intracellular starch and TAG production rates of Scenedesmus obliquus, allowing estimations of productivities under different light intensities.…”

“…We can use models to estimate biomass and TAG productivities of both Original and S5 under controlled conditions. Models can further translate results from indoor and outdoor experiments at specific locations to different locations worldwide [96][97][98] Modelling is a powerful tool to evaluate the potential of different variables on microalgae growth and metabolism [97][98][99][100] . A few models have been developed for microalgae, mostly describing biomass productivity as a function of light intensity 98,101,102 .…”