Blue-green algae, Spirulina platensis, is cultivated under photoautotrophic growth conditions designed to have nearly uniform growth rate throughout the fermentor by illumination both sides of a rectangular vessel. The results show that growth rate and bioenergetic yield are a function of light intensity. Several kinetic models are considered to express the relationship between growth rate and light intensity.

No abstract

Available electron methods are presented and used to estimate theoretical energetic growth yields for photoautotrophic, mixotrophic, and photoheterotrophic growth of algae and photosynthetic bacteria. The theoretical yields are compared to experimental values reported previously. For photoautotrophic and mixotrophic growth of algae experimental values that approach and even exceed the theoretical values have been reported in the literature. For photosynthetic bacteria experimental yields are much smaller than thetheoretical maximum values.

Methods are presented for examining the consistency of experimental data for microbial growth where light energy is converted to chemical energy through photosynthesis. True growth yield and maintenance parameters are estimated for several sets of available experimental data. Methods of parameter estimation are presented which allow all of the measured variables to be used simultaneously for parameter estimation. The results show that a wide range of values have been found for the true growth yield and maintenance parameters. Values of the true growth yield range from 0.04 to values above those predicted by the Z-scheme model for photosynthesis.