10.5071/19THEUBCE2011-VP1.4.4
Brink, J.
J.
Brink
Marx, S.
S.
Marx
Feasibility of Cultivating Hartbeespoort Dam Microalgae
ETA-Florence Renewable Energies
2011
Conference paper
Biomass
2011
en
978-88-89407-55-4
3 Pages
application/pdf
Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, pp. 791-793
Three cultivation experiments were conducted to grow microalgae in three consecutively scaled-up laboratory systems, which consisted of one, five and 135-litre bioreactors. The highest productivity achieved under optimum growth conditions was in the 5-litre Erlenmeyer bioreactors with 0.0862 g/L/d at an average bioreactor day-time temperature of 26.0oC and an aeration rate of 1.5 L/min. The three cultivation experiments revealed that closedÂcultivation systems would not be feasible for the economic cultivation of micro-algal biomass from the Hartbeespoort Dam, as the highest biomass concentrations achieved under optimum laboratory conditions were too low. OpenÂcultivation systems are only feasible if the infrastructure already exists, like in the case of the Hartbeespoort Dam. It is recommended that designers of new micro-algal biomass-to-liquids (BtL) biodiesel processes first try to capitalize on existing cultivation infrastructure, like dams, by connecting their processes to them. This will reduce the capital and operating costs of a BtL process significantly.
Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 791-793