The difference in effective light penetration may explain the superiority in photosynthetic efficiency of attached cultivation over the conventional open pond for microalgae

BACKGROUND The 'attached cultivation' technique for microalgae production, combining the immobilized biofilm technology with proper light dilution strategies, has shown improved biomass production and photosynthetic efficiency over conventional open-pond suspended cultures. However, how light is transferred and distributed inside the biofilm has not been clearly defined yet. RESULTS In this research, the growth, photosynthetic oxygen evolution, and specific growth rate for microalgal cells in both open-pond and attached cultivation were studied to determine the effective light penetration at different phases of the cultivation. As a result, the light conditions inside the culture broth as well as the biofilm were revealed for the first time. Results showed that outdoor, in a conventional 20-cm deep open pond, all of the algal cells were fully illuminated in the first 3 days of cultivation. As the biomass concentration increased from day 4 to day 10, the light could only effectively penetrate 45.5% of the open-pond depth, and then effective light penetration gradually decreased to 31.1% at day 31, when the biomass density reached a maximum value of 0.45 g L(-1) or 90 g m(-2). In the attached cultivation system, under nitrogen-replete condition, almost 100% of the immobilized algal cells inside the biofilm were effectively illuminated from day 0 through day 10 when the biomass density increased from 8.8 g m(-2) to 107.6 g m(-2). CONCLUSION Higher light penetration efficiency might be the reason why, using attached cultivation, observed values for photosynthetic efficiency were higher than those recorded in conventional open-pond suspended cultures.