Abstract
It is important to design photobioreactor by cheap material for economical microalgal biomass production. In this study, two types of marine photobioreactors (MPBR), made by either polyvinyl chloride (MPBR-PVC) or high density poly ethylene (MPBR-HDPE), are used and performance of these were compared. Tetraselmis sp. KCTC 12236BP is a green marine alga that isolated from Ganghwa Island, Korea, and the strain was used for marine cultivations using MPBR-PVC and MPBR-HDPE. The cultivations were performed three times in the spring season of 2012 using MPBR-PVC and of 2013 using MPBR-HDPE in the coastal area of Young Heung Island. As the results, MPBR-PVC shows higher biomass productivities than MPBR-HDPE, due to its high light transmittance. In the cultivations using MPBR-PVC, the average sea water temperature was $11.5^{\circ}C$ during the first experiment and $16.5^{\circ}C$ during the second and third experiments. Average light intensities during three times for experiments were 407.5, 268.1 and $273.0{\mu}{\cdot}E{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}s^{-1}$, respectively. The maximum fresh cell weight and average biomass productivity were $1.2g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ and $0.12g{\cdot}L^{-1}{\cdot}day^{-1}$. These results showed that Tetraselmis sp. KCTC12236BP were adapted well with the environmental conditions from ocean, and grow in the MPBR-PVC and MPBR-HDPE.
