Scale-up and design of a pilot-plant photobioreactor for the continuous culture of Spirulina platensis

Scale-up of bioreactors has the intrinsic difficulty of establishing a reli able relationship among physical parameters involved in the design of the n ew bioreactor and the physiology of the cultured cells. This is more critic al in those cases where a more complex operation of the bioreactor is neede d, such as in photobioreactors. A key issue in the operation of photobiorea ctors is establishing a quantification for the interaction between external illumination, internal light distribution and cell growth. In this paper a n approach to the scale-up of a photobioreactor for the culture of Spirulin a platensis, based on a mathematical model describing this interaction, and the operation of a previous reactor 10 times smaller is presented. The pap er describes the approach followed in the scale-up, the analysis of differe nt design constraints, the physical realization of the new bioreactor desig n, innovative use of plastic material walls to improve reactor safety, and finally the corroboration of its satisfactory operation.