Algae Scale-Up Equipment Speeds Time-to-Commercialization for Researchers and Biomass Producers

The Sacramento Bee
By BioVantage Resources
Published: Tuesday, Sep. 20, 2011 - 5:08 am

Biomass Production Made Easy, From Milligrams to Kilograms to Commercial Scale

GOLDEN, Colo., Sept. 20, 2011 -- /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- BioVantage Resources, Inc. (www.biovantageresources.com) has announced the availability of algae scale-up bioreactors to reduce time-to-commercialization, facilitating small-to-large volume production of phototrophic cultures.

Products come in three form-factors: 8-30 liter bubble columns, 400-6000 liter tank-based bioreactors (or inoculation systems), and larger, made-to-order raceway ponds with integrated mixing. A variety of units can be combined to meet production requirements and to support culture maintenance. These commercial units have been designed with integrated intelligence to enable repeatable, reliable production of high quality algae, even at commercial scales.

"Our laboratory needed to transition from the analytical scales that we were using to grow algae to obtain much larger quantities of biomass," said Matthew Posewitz, assistant professor at Colorado School of Mines. "The five, 30 liter bioreactors we purchased from BioVantage Resources were perfect. Our mutant phenotypes all carried over to the scaled-up growth conditions and we can now easily obtain kilograms of dry weight for our protein research and to assess a variety of biofuel molecules at larger scale. The bioreactors are easy-to-use, clean and harvest cells."

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