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Algae are organisms with the potential to provide efficient green CCU, with a consumption of 1.8 kg CO2 per kg of algae produced. Unfortunately, large-scale production is limited by the requirement to use natural light for photosynthesis. Most importantly for Industrial scalability natural light restricts photobioreactor geometries, limiting design to 2D (typically raceways or tubular systems) that make large scale operation problematic and uneconomic.
Principal Investigator
Swansea University
Prof Darren Oatley-Radcliffe
Swansea University
Dr Andrius Stanulis
Swansea University
In order to utilize CO2 by its conversion to high protein feedstuff for agriculture and high value chemicals, the objective of this project is to design and test a new 3D ‘CUBE’ reactor that will enable high volume CCU.
Internally lit photobioreactors will revolutionize the industry and deliver a step change leading to intensive production of high quality, high value algae and derived products. The ‘CUBE’ reactor is conceptually simple of very basic design with an internally lit airlift system that delivers cost effective algal growth, i.e., no pumping and only absorbed frequencies of light are delivered to the organism. Essentially this is a box, which is then perfectly suitable for scale-up to any working capacity, i.e., line up and stack the boxes to generate capacity giving true 3-dimensional scale-up.
Project Collaborators: Vale Clydach Refinery, Tata (Port Talbot Works)