Microalgae are a potential source of sustainable commodities of fuels, chemicals and food and feed additives. The current high production costs, as a result of the low areal productivities, limit the application of microalgae in industry. A first step is determining how the different production system designs relate to each other under identical climate conditions. The productivity and photosynthetic efficiency of Nannochloropsis sp. CCAP 211/78 cultivated in four different outdoor continuously operated pilot-scale photobioreactors under the same climatological conditions were compared. The optimal dilution rate was determined for each photobioreactor by operation of the different photobioreactors at different dilution rates.
In vertical photobioreactors, higher areal productivities and photosynthetic efficiencies, 19-24 g m(-2) day(-1) and 2.4-4.2 %, respectively, were found in comparison to the horizontal systems; 12-15 g m(-2) day(-1) and 1.5-1.8 %. The higher ground areal productivity in the vertical systems could be explained by light dilution in combination with a higher light capture. In the raceway pond low productivities were obtained, due to the long optical path in this system. Areal productivities in all systems increased with increasing photon flux densities up to a photon flux density of 30 mol m(-2) day(-1). Photosynthetic efficiencies remained constant in all systems with increasing photon flux densities. The highest photosynthetic efficiencies obtained were; 4.2 % for the vertical tubular photobioreactor, 3.8 % for the flat panel reactor, 1.8 % for the horizontal tubular reactor, and 1.5 % for the open raceway pond.
Vertical photobioreactors resulted in higher areal productivities than horizontal photobioreactors because of the lower incident photon flux densities on the reactor surface. The flat panel photobioreactor resulted, among the vertical photobioreactors studied, in the highest average photosynthetic efficiency, areal and volumetric productivities due to the short optical path. Photobioreactor light interception should be further optimized to maximize ground areal productivity and photosynthetic efficiency.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 31 January 2023.
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#7,581,768
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#585
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Outputs of similar age from Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts
#26
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Altmetric has tracked 34,360,257 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,024 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 64% of its peers.
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