Optimizing Luminous Transmittance of a Three-Dimensional-Printed Fixed Bed Photobioreactor

The development of innovative production processes and the optimization of photobioreactors play an important role in generating industrial competitive production technologies for phototrophic biofilms. With emerse photobioreactors a technology was introduced that allowed efficient surface attached cultivation of terrestrial cyanobacteria. However, the productivity of emerse photobioreactors depends on the available cultivation surface. By the implementation of biocarriers to the bioreactor volume, the cultivation surface can be increased which potentially improves productivity and thus the production of valuable compounds. To investigate the surface attached cultivation on biocarriers new photobioreactors need to be developed. Additive manufacturing (AM) offers new opportunities for the design of photobioreactors but producing the needed transparent parts can be challenging using AM techniques. In this study an emerse fixed bed photobioreactor was designed for the use of biocarriers and manufactured using different AM processes. To validate the suitability of the photobioreactor for phototrophic cultivation, the optical properties of three-dimensional (3D)-printed transparent parts and postprocessing techniques to improve luminous transmittance of the components were investigated. We found that stereolithography 3D printing can produce parts with a high luminous transmittance of over 85% and that optimal postprocessing by sanding and clear coating improved the clarity and transmittance to more than 90%. Using the design freedom of AM resulted in a bioreactor with reduced part count and improved handling. In summary, we found that modern 3D-printing technologies and materials are suitable for the manufacturing of functional photobioreactor prototypes.