REVIEW ARTICLE


Closed Photobioreactor Assessments to Grow, Intensively, Light Dependent Microorganisms: A Twenty-Year Italian Outdoor Investigation



Pietro Carlozzi*
Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi, Distaccamento di Firenze, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Polo Scientifico, Via Madonna del Piano n. 10, 50019 Sesto F.no, Firenze, Italy


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Creative Commons License
© 2008 Pietro Carlozzi

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi, Distaccamento di Firenze, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Polo Scientifico, Via Madonna del Piano n. 10, 50019 Sesto F.no, Firenze, Italy; E-mail: pietro.carlozzi@ise.cnr.it


Abstract

Twenty years of Italian outdoor investigations on closed photobioreactors are discussed in this review. Many photobioreactor designs have been projected; some have been built, tested and patented. The Italian research approach from tubular (single tube and traditional loop) to flat and column and again to tubular photobioreactors (coil and loops) has improved microalgal yield. It increased from 25.0 gm-2d-1 in 1986 (using a traditional loop set down on the ground) to 47.7 gm-2d-1 in 2003, when results of a new tubular undulating row photobioreactor (TURP) were reported. This very high TURP productivity was attributed to a light dilution growth-strategy using Arthrospira platensis; the photic ratio (Rf) ranged from 3 to 6.