What this work is about, in plain words
A one-page abstract on growing the marine diatom Cylindrotheca closterium in a gas-vortex photobioreactor of hundreds of liters for the pigment fucoxanthin. According to the abstract, 3.6 kg of biomass and 30 g of fucoxanthin were obtained in 18 days.
Fucoxanthin is an orange pigment of marine algae. It is usually obtained from brown seaweeds, but they contain little of the pigment, and it breaks down while the raw material is stored. The authors proposed another source — a culture of the marine diatom C. closterium, whose biomass can contain up to 2 % fucoxanthin by dry weight — and set out to develop a technology for growing it in large volumes.
The culture was grown in a gas-vortex system developed by scientists in Novosibirsk: the suspension in it is mixed by a vortex, without a stirrer. The suspension volume was 600 L. The fucoxanthin content was determined by chromatography, and for verification the pigment was isolated in crystalline form and its structure was confirmed by physical methods.
According to the authors, over the 18 days of the experiment culture density reached 6 g of dry biomass per liter, and fucoxanthin made up about 1 % of dry weight. In total, 3.6 kg of biomass and 30 g of fucoxanthin were obtained. The authors conclude that this diatom can be grown in large volumes in this way and the pigment obtained at low cost.
The work is a brief account of the experiment described in more detail in an article from the same year.
Limitations. This is a conference abstract: without a full description of the methods and without statistics. The figures in the abstract differ slightly from the article of the same year (there: 580 L, 3.5 kg in 15 days). The abstract contains no cost calculation. The health properties of fucoxanthin were not studied in this work.