School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia; Biomass Lab, School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia.
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Bioresour Technol. 2018 Mar;252:91-99. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.12.065. Epub 2017 Dec 21.
Microalgae represent the most promising new source of biomass for the world's growing demands. However, the biomass productivity and quality is significantly decreased by the presence of bacteria or other invading microalgae species in the cultures. We therefore report a low-cost spiral-microchannel that can effectively separate and purify Tetraselmis suecica (lipid-rich microalgae) cultures from Phaeodactylum tricornutum (invasive diatom). Fluorescent polystyrene-microbeads of 6 μm and 10 μm diameters were first used as surrogate particles to optimize the microchannel design by mimicking the microalgae cell behaviour. Using the optimum flowrate, up to 95% of the P. tricornutum cells were separated from the culture without affecting the cell viability. This study shows, for the first time, the potential of inertial microfluidics to sort microalgae species with minimal size difference. Additionally, this approach can also be applied as a pre-sorting technique for water quality analysis.
微藻是世界日益增长的需求中最有前途的生物质新来源。然而，在培养物中存在细菌或其他入侵的微藻物种，会显著降低生物质的生产力和质量。因此，我们报告了一种低成本的螺旋微通道，它可以有效地分离和纯化富含油脂的微藻塔苏斯氏藻（Tetraselmis suecica）和入侵硅藻新月菱形藻（Phaeodactylum tricornutum）。首先，使用直径为 6 μm 和 10 μm 的荧光聚苯乙烯微球作为替代颗粒，通过模拟微藻细胞的行为来优化微通道设计。使用最佳流速，可将 95%的新月菱形藻细胞从培养物中分离出来，而不影响细胞活力。这项研究首次表明，惯性微流控技术具有分选具有最小尺寸差异的微藻物种的潜力。此外，这种方法还可以用作水质分析的预分选技术。
