Large-scale cultures of algae have multiple commercial uses, either for large-scale production of valuable target products or for wastewater and waste gas treatment and recycling.

As an expert in algae culture and research, Lifeasible has a professional team and a wide range of closed PBRs to provide quality and reliable large-scale algae culture services by vertical tubular photobioreactors (PBRs).

Vertical Tubular PBRs

Vertical tubular PBRs are best suited for outdoor large-scale cultivation because of their large surface area. These PBRs are composed of transparent vertical tubes that allow light penetration. The culture is circulated with an air pump or air-lift system. Vertical tubular PBRs can be divided into bubble columns and air-lift reactors.

Bubbling Column Reactors

Bubble column PBRs are an alternative to stirred reactors in which agitation and mixing of the culture solution are achieved by gas injection, whose height is more than twice the diameter.

• Factors Affecting Algal Culture
  The hydrodynamic transfer characteristics of the column depend entirely on the behavior of the bubbles released from the booster and the photosynthetic efficiency depends to a large extent on the gas flow rate.
• Advantages of Bubble Column PBRs
  Bubble column PBRs have many advantages, including low cost, high surface area to volume ratio, satisfactory heat and mass transfer, and efficient release of O₂.

Fig.1 Schematic of a bubble column photobioreactor. (Gupta, P. L., et al., 2015, World journal of microbiology & biotechnology)

Airlift PBRs

Airlift PBRs differ from bubble column PBRs because of the physical separation of two interconnected regions, the riser (upward flow) and the downflow (downward flow) comer. The liquid circulation in the airlift PBRs is caused by the density difference between the riser and the lower comer.

• Advantages of Airlift PBRs
  Air-lift reactors have the characteristic advantage of creating a circulating mixing pattern in which the liquid culture passes continuously through the dark and light phases, giving a shimmering effect on the algal cells.
• Three Types of Airlift PBRs
  The most common air-lift configurations contain internal loop, internal loop concentric, and external loop vessels.

Internal Loop Vessels	Internal Loop Concentric Vessels	External Loop Vessels
The ascender and descender are separated by an internal baffle. The liquid rises on one side of the baffle and falls on the other side of the baffle.	The air is injected into the concentric tube, which allows the culture to circulate from the riser (dark zone) to the lower tube (illuminated zone).	Separate vertical tubes are connected by short horizontal sections at the top and bottom, which allows better mixing in the outer circulation.

Fig.2 Schematics of airlift photobioreactors. (Gupta, P. L., et al., 2015, World journal of microbiology & biotechnology)

Our Services

Because the large-scale culture of algae is highly economical and vertical PBRs are a very efficient and low-cost class of algae culture vessels. Therefore, Lifeasible offers large-scale algae culture services by a wide variety of vertical tubular PBRs to meet the different needs of our customers.

Why Choose Us

With advanced and a wide variety of equipment and professional scientists, Lifeasible can offer reliable large-scale algae culture services by vertical tubular PBRs. Please contact us for more information.

Reference

• Gupta, P. L., Lee, S. M., & Choi, H. J. (2015). A mini review: photobioreactors for large scale algal cultivation. World journal of microbiology & biotechnology, 31(9), 1409–1417.

Our services are for research use only and not for any clinical use.