“The emerging algae industry has the potential to eclipse the oil and gas industry as we have known it in our generation.
Anything you can do with petroleum products can be done with algae, and much, much more!”
Stan Pankratz, PhD
MICROALGAE are single cell organisms, a subset of algae. And, to make things more interesting, spirulina also known as arthrospira is commonly known as a blue-green algae. However, from a taxonomy perspective these organisms are oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria, or “prokaryotes” lacking an organized nucleus.
Since 2011 Summit View Development Corp has been involved in research work involving microalgae. Since 2019 the focus of research has been on developing an advanced, environmentally controlled photobioreactor technology to cultivate algae for food, specifically with arthrospira patensis. This algae species was selected because it is classed as a superfood, high in protein, abundance of vitamins, high digestibility and more.
This project aims to scale to a commercial level of a 10m3 and to fully automate and optimize system processes from cultivation through to harvesting, drying, and storage.
The next step in scale up operations will be to design / construct a 1m3 PBR algae cultivation platform.
Increase yield
Therefore, research efforts must include emphasis on reducing the energy input costs.