Construction and Operation of an Affordable Laboratory Photobioreactor System for Simultaneous Cultivation of up to 12 Independent 1 L Cyanobacterial Cultures

Abstract

Introduction Introduction Photobioreactor System Assembly Example Operating Procedure References A large field of research has developed for the study of cyanobacteria for photosynthetic chemical production [1]. Understanding the bioenergetics of growth and product secretion of cyanobacteria requires experiments in controlled environments with volumes large enough to allow sampling over time without removing most of the culture medium. The cost of commercial laboratory photobioreactors makes these experiments inaccessible to many researchers and limits experimental throughput. In this work, we designed and constructed a system of 12 independent, sterilizable cyanobacterial photobioreactors for cultures up to 1 L in volume for a cost less than a single commercial photobioreactor (Figure 1, Table 1). ...