School of Mechanical Engineering Oz Habibi
School of Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 14:00
Tokhna Building, Room 101
Macro algae yield enhancement by flashing light
Oz Habiby
MSc Student of Prof. Alex Liberzon Alex and Dr. Alex Golberg
The growing population of the world demands more sources of food, energy and chemicals. As the arable area of the planet is being used widely the marine hold an unfulfilled potential. Marine biomass does not require potable water and does not compete the traditional agriculture on and land use and resources. One of the major bottle necks for this vision to fulfill is the biomass productivity per installed unit area. To create a cost effective industry, the product yield must be enhanced. One of many approaches to address the problem is to increase biomass production efficiency. However, to date there has been a lack of controlled laboratory studies of macro algae growth in physiological conditions relevant to the offshore cultivation.
To fill this gap, a laboratory scale macro algae photo bioreactor (M-PBR) was designed, assembled and operated in order to examine physiological parameters such as illumination influence. The illumination is being controlled separately to each reactor and enables to test different light related parameters, such as intensity or flashing light effect.
The algae growing in the M-PBR has performed 30% daily growth rate with efficiency of 1.11% (PAR spectrum|) in transformation of photons to biomass. Using the flashing light effect enables us to grow the algae with efficiency 5.68%.
The effect of growth under flashing light can be used for sharing sunlight energy between several depth layers of algae by periodic exposure. This concept could in principle enhance the yield per installed area up to 5 times in a future offshore cultivation.
