Design and development of centred-light photobioreactor for microalgae cultivation system

Abstract The cultivation of microalgae within a controlled condition allows the production of biomass with lower contamination and suitable for high value pharmaceutical products. The controlled environment for microalgae growing can be accomplished by utilizing photobioreactor as a platform for introducing the basic needs needed by microalgae to grow effectively. However, due to some problems of high cost, low illumination and complicated cultivation systems which referring to available photobioreactors had contributed to low biomass production. This study deals with designing a new lab scale photobioreactor for overcoming the problems contributed by the available photobioreactors. During the developing process of the photobioreactor, the user needs are identified, and the most suitable concept based on the user needs was generated. The concept was then fabricated to prototype and its performance was validated. A centred-light photobioreactor was successfully developed for lab scale usage and being tested by cultivating Chlorella vulgaris species. A maximum of 0.281 g/L cell concentration was achieved using white light source during cultivation of Chlorella vulgaris.