(188bl) Development of Synthetic Perfluorinated Photobioreactor System for Simultaneous CO2 separation and Promotion of Microalgae Growth and Productions

Yu-Hsiang Lee^*, Tsu-Chun Weng

Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan R.O.C.

^*Email: yuhsianl@ncu.edu.tw

INTRODUCTION: CO₂ is the primary impurity in many fuel gases and may reduce the efficiency of fuel combustion and generate a lot of incomplete residues in the product, leading to energy waste and environmental issues after emission. Currently although plants/microalgae-mediated approaches have been widely used for CO₂ separation/digestion, they are usually emphasized on CO₂ removal efficacy for purpose of environment protection, but showed less consideration to subsequent CO₂ manipulation for cell culture that restricts their effectiveness thereafter. To address above issues, the perfluorinated photobioreactor system (PPBRS) that enabled CO₂ separation and controlled microalgae cultivation was developed in this study.

RESULTS: Results showed that the PPBRS provided > 85% CO₂ separation efficiency from 60%-N₂/40%-CO₂ within 5 days by using perfluorocarbon as the CO₂ absorbent; whereby the microalgae Nannochloropsis oculata (N. oculata) cultured with 20 mL min-1 perfluorocarbon containing 2% CO₂ isolated from the gas mixture exhibited 2-fold higher cell concentration and yielded 1.8-, 2.5-, and 2-fold (P < 0.05 for all) increased productions of biomass, lipid, and eicosapentaenoic acid, respectively, compared to the group with air aeration without PFC for 5 days.

CONCLUSION: With advantages that perfluorocarbon is recyclable and all the procedures including CO₂ extraction, collection of purified gas, and delivery of isolated CO₂ to cell culture are in continuous process without need of additional handling, the PPBRS provides an efficacious, easy-to-use, and cost-effective means for simultaneous CO₂ separation and enhanced microalgae productions that is highly applicable for use in the industry.