Cultivation of Microalgae-Alfa Chemistry

NEW YORK - Oct. 21, 2019 - PRLog -- Batch culture
The batch culture of microalgae has the advantages of simple operation and low cost, and is a commonly used cultivation method in the laboratory. In recent years, the use of microalgae to treat sewage is also one of the research hotspots on microalgae cultivation. The main purpose of treating sewage with microalgae is to remove pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus or heavy metals from the sewage. It is possible to reduce the pollutants in the sewage to a very low level by culturing the microalgae.

Fed-batch culture
The fed-batch culture refers to a culture method in which one or more nutrients are added to the reactor intermittently or continuously during the culture process. The basic feature of this method is to control the concentration of nutrients in the reactor by changing the rate of nutrient addition. In microalgae culture, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus are essential nutrients, but for some algae species, excessive concentration of CO2, ammonia or phosphorus will inhibit or toxic the growth of microalgae. Compared with batch culture, fed-batch culture can better control the concentration of nutrients in the culture solution, significantly increase the biomass of microalgae and the yield of the final target product, and can effectively improve the utilization rate of nutrients.

Semi-continuous culture
Semi-continuous culture refers to a method of harvesting a certain amount of algae liquid after the algae cells reach a certain concentration, and then adding an equal amount of the culture solution to continue the cultivation. Semi-continuous culture is not only widely used for large-scale culture, but also a culture mode commonly used in the laboratory research of microalgae. In the semi-continuous culture process, the fresh culture medium is used to replace the same amount of the original culture liquid, so that the nutrient content in the culture liquid is increased, the biological density is decreased, and the light transmittance is increased, and therefore the photosynthesis efficiency of the algae is enhanced, and the growth rate of algae is increased.

Continuous culture
Continuous culture refers to a culture method in which fresh culture solution is continuously added to a culture system at a constant flow rate while flowing out of the culture solution at the same rate so that the growth environment of the cells in the reactor is at a constant state. This culture method makes the growth rate and metabolic activity of the cells relatively constant, thereby achieving the purpose of stably and rapidly culturing the microalgae or producing a large amount of metabolites. Therefore, continuous culture plays a role that cannot be replaced by other models, both in the high-volume production of microalgae powder (https://www.alfa-chemistry.com/services/microalgae-powder...) and in the stable production of certain important metabolites.