Photo-mixotrophic Cultivation of Algae Euglena gracilis for Lipid Production

In the future, due to limited resources, a crisis of energy storing molecules (fuels), which are currently produced from crude mineral oil, is expected. One strategy to compensate a part of the oil deficiency is the production of biodiesel from microalgal lipids. As model microorganism for lipid production microalgae Euglena gracilis was selected and photo mixotrophic cultivation was performed in the stirred tank photobioreactor. During this research, medium composition and operational conditions of photo-bioreactor were optimized in order to define adequate cultivation conditions for algae biomass and lipid production. As low-cost and available complex carbon/ nitrogen source, corn steep liquor (CSL) was used to promote E. gracilis growth and lipid production. Due to the optimization of medium composition and cultivation conditions, lipid production was increased up to 29% of biomass dry weight in a two stage cultivation process inside one photo-bioreactor. Promising results obtained in this research encouraged us for further investigation.