Biomass and lipid content in microalgae cultivated in ponds

In this project I studied the effect of sequential batch cultures of the marine microalgae Nannochloropsis oculata on lipid and biomass production.

This work was conducted in 200-liter raceway ponds for 167 days during winter and spring seasons in Mexico City. I monitored the daily and seasonal variations of light irradiance and temperature under greenhouse conditions. In addition, I measured the biomass production and lipids composition over nine harvesting cycles. To cope with the amount of data generated, I conducted the data analysis in the R ecosystem.

The main outcome of this study depicted the robustness of this algae to increase biomass production without compromising the quality of lipids under sequential batch cultures in raceway ponds. The latter in spite of the daily and seasonal variations of light irradiance (0–1099 μmol photon/m² s), greenhouse temperature (2.1–50.7 °C), and culture temperature (12.5–31.4 °C).

# algae #  lipids #  R #  raceways