Algal Photobioreactor

Closed-loop indoors system working with LED lights to keep individual algae species inoculated for a clean-culture operation, thus helping enhance algae cultivation. The systems' architecture can be composed of plastic, tubular or flat-panel glass, or stainless-steel fermenter-like reactors that contain internal illumination to allow maximum light incidence. This solution aims to harness algae's potential as an efficient raw material for nutritional supplements, biofuel, animal feeds, cosmetics, water recovery, and medicine.

This closed-loop cultivation system offers accurate control over contamination and cell physiology and improves the harvest through increased plant growth and quality, despite the accompanying manufacturing costs. Furthermore, if added to wastewater treatment plants, this system could harness algae's bioremediation power to eliminate a considerable amount of contaminants and, in turn, return recycled water into the chain.

Although many research advances allowed photobioreactors to be more efficient, photobioreactors are still expensive for large-scale algae production byproducts despite the continuous and intensive research on the cultivation systems.