On September 12th 2019 the EnhanceMicroAlgae team at Swansea University offered a successful workshop on microalgae cultivation and downstream processing. Attendees from across Europe toured the facilities within the Department of Biosciences and experienced first-hand how to handle and culture microalgae at both the laboratory and pilot plant scales. Dr. María José Chapela Garrido, EnhanceMicroAlgae project coordinator from ANFACO-CECOPESCA kicked off the workshop by introducing the audience to the EnhanceMicroAlgae project partners and objectives, you can find her presentation here.
Members of the Interreg NWE project ALG-AD – which aims to create value from waste by integrating algal and anaerobic digestion technologies – at Swansea University were present at the event to assist with the delivery of the workshop materials and demonstrate useful microalgae-related laboratory protocols. One of the highlights of the workshop was delivered by Dr. Claudio Fuentes Grunewald, who displayed their brand-new serpentine 1,000 L Phyco-FlowTM photobioreactor (http://www.variconaqua.com/) where a number of successful microalgae culture trials have already been carried out (read more about this here!).
Attendees to the workshop also had the opportunity to meet Prof. Kevin Flynn – author of the EnhanceMicroAlgae Decision Support Tool (DST) book – and learn in a practical session how to run the various microalgae models that will be available in the DST book and carry out simulations of algal growth under various culture and harvesting conditions. Click here to see his presentation, or visit our DST page for more details and to download a copy of the book.
After a successful day of workshop activities at Swansea University, EnhanceMicroAlgae partners gathered on September 13th to share their latest project updates and developments. The meeting was a perfect platform for all partners to discuss and evaluate the course of action established to meet the project’s objectives and thus increase the competitiveness of the microalgae sector within the Atlantic area.