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Culturing microalgae in the ocean has potentials that may reduce the production cost and provide an option for an economic biofuel production from microalgae. The ocean holds great potentials for mass microalgal cultivation with its high specific heat, mixing energy from waves, and large cultivable area. Suitable photobioreactors (PBRs) that are capable of integrating marine energy into the culture systems need to be developed for the successful ocean cultivation. In this study, prototype floating PBRs were designed and constructed using transparent low-density polyethylene film for microalgal culture in the ocean. To improve the mixing efficiency, various types of internal partitions were introduced within PBRs. Three different types of internal partitions were evaluated for their effects on the mixing efficiency in terms of mass transfer (k(L)a) and mixing time in the PBRs. The partition type with the best mixing efficiency was selected, and the number of partitions was varied from one to three for investigation of its effect on mixing efficiency. When the number of partitions is increased, mass transfer increased in proportion to the number of partitions. However, mixing time was not directly related to the number of partitions. When a green microalga, Tetraselmis sp. was cultivated using PBRs with the selected partition under semi-continuous mode in the ocean, biomass and fatty acid productivities in the PBRs were increased by up to 50 % and 44% at high initial cell density, respectively, compared to non-partitioned ones. The results of internally partitioned PBRs demonstrated potentials for culturing microalgae by efficiently utilizing ocean wave energy into culture mixing in the ocean.

A green microalga, Tetraselmis sp., was cultivated in the coastal seawater of Young-Heung Island using semi-permeable membrane photobioreactors (SPM-PBRs) in different seasons. The microalgae in the SPM-PBRs were able to grow on nutrients diffused into the PBRs from the surrounding seawater through SPMs. The biomass productivity varied depending on the ion permeabilities of the SPMs and environmental conditions, whereas the quality and quantity of fatty acids were constant. The temperature of seawater had a greater influence than solar radiation did on productivity of Tetraselmis sp. in SPM-PBRs. SPM-PBRs could provide technologies for concurrent algal biomass and fatty acids production, and eutrophication reduction in the ocean.

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In this article, we demonstrate that hydrogel‐based composite membranes are used as semipermeable materials for the construction of photobioreactors (PBRs). PBRs are developed to culture microalgae using nutrients dissolved in seawater, and thus they need to be fabricated with membranes possessing sufficient material‐transport properties. While hydrogels are characterized by their highly swelling nature in water and therefore have desirable transport of dissolved matter, they lack the mechanical strength to be cast into thin structures of large surface area. This issue motivated us to design a new concept, i.e., fabric‐hydrogel composite membranes (FHCMs). A cotton fabric inside the hydrogel matrix endows the composite with tensile strength, which enables casting of FHCMs into thin membranes. Several FHCMs were prepared with 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), cross‐linking poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA) and a sheet of gauze by controlling the composition of the monomers and water. In the permeability measurement of nitrate ions, a key ingredient for the growth of microalgae, the permeability coefficient reached as high as 1.2 x 10−8 m2 min−1, which is roughly three times higher than that of a commercially available semipermeable membrane (3.3 x 10−9 m2 min−1). In the following evaluation of microalgal culture, a PBR constructed with a FHCM was able to maintain sufficient NO3− ion concentration and pH of the culture broth, supporting microalgal growth. These results suggest that the composite membranes with hydrogel and fabric have potential in the application of microalgal culture for bio‐diesel production in a marine environment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2016, 54, 108–114