Berlin Metropolitan Area
In my current position at Xanthella I work on the development of cost effective photobioreactors and equipment to cultivate photosynthetic microorganisms with artificial illumination (LEDs). Currently we offer a 1L and a 20L cultivation system. In the future we are developing systems up to a scale of 1m³.
Algenol Biofuels aims to produce ethanol from sun, water and carbon dioxide with gentically modified cyanobacteria. My work at Algenol involves the development and performance of lab scale continuous cultivation for cyanobacteria. Furthermore, I am responsible for batch cultivation, study of photobiological questions (oxygen production, respiration, formation of energy storge compounds) during ethanol production as well as studing carbon branching under various cultivation conditions.
"Microalgal photosynthesis under flashing light" Green microalgae have the potential to produce a big variety of natural products; therefore they are suitable organisms for a biobased economy. Light is the ultimate energy source for growing algae which suggests using natural sunlight for large scale cultivations. Due to mutual shading a light and a dark zone appear inside a photobioreactor (PBR). In order to assure a sufficient mass transfer the culture has to be mixed (pumping, gassing). The mixing forces the algae to alternate between the light and dark zone of the PBR. Little is known about the effects of these mixing induced light/dark cycles on algal growth and photosynthetic efficiency. Some literature suggests an increase in light to biomass conversion efficiency in comparison to continuous illumination, whereas other authors observed a decrease in efficiency. However, it can be concluded that flashing light has an influence on algal growth and light to biomass conversion efficiency. The aim of the project is to investigate the influence of sub-second light/dark cycles on algal growth and light to biomass conversion efficiency. Based on experimental data a model will be developed which predicts the photosynthetic response to these dynamic light regimes. http://www.bpe.wur.nl/UK/
Set-up of bench scale photobioreactors for continuous algae cultivation.
Thesis title: Cultivation of green microalgae in a newly developed spinning tube-in-tube photobioreactor. The focus of my final thesis was to troubleshoot and improve the tube-in-tube photobioreactor to be able to cultivate algae. After sucessful completion, influence of different mixing rates on the growth and productivity of Chlorella sorokiniana was studied.