UWO researchers magnetize algae to optimize growth, lipid yield

Biodiesel Magazine
By Bryan Sims July 12, 2011

While scientists all over the world are hard at work employing different methods to efficiently increase growth rates and higher lipid yields in microalgae for the biofuel and pharmaceutical markets, Wankei Wan, a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, discovered that exposing microalgae to static magnetic fields could be another viable route for optimizing growth rate and lipid production in microalgae.

According to Wan, his research team designed and built a lab-scale raceway pond featuring a paddle wheel that gently agitated the fluid and they began growing a common species of single-celled algae called Chlorella kessleri. They then took a small side stream off the main reactor and passed it through a static magnetic field all the while measuring the growth rate and oil production of the algae. What Wan observed, which will soon be published in a forthcoming paper to be submitted in the journal Bioelectromagnetics, wasn’t short of being “an interesting phenomenon”, he said.

Read more