Re: [DIYbio] Will Green Slime Save the Planet? Talk to kickstart algae projects at BUGSS

Perhaps we have fallen into the trap of having a solution before there was a problem, but. . .

 We were almost immediately inspired to think a lot about reactor, jacket structures upon using our 3-D RepRap printer,  because of the adjustable  fill patterns between the solid shells that make up a typical low cost 3-D print. It may be fairly easy to realize some nice multiply jacketed structures.  These fill areas can be of very low or very high density/surface area with a simple change of the settings of the slicer program (eg Slcr)  We think you could do a lot of prototyping to get an ideal structure, but we may be too limited in the scale of objects that we can produce.

We're interested really in a more continuous biological production of high value materials, without dealing with the separation or cleaning of a lot of algae biomass.  I suppose the ideal organism would secrete the product, while taking in whatever is being processed.  I'm hoping that there has been some progress with engineered algae so that virtually no processing of the biomass is needed, but perhaps algae is not the ideal organism to use in a reactor with the size and scale possible using a low cost 3-d printer. 

Obviously large structures done with 3-d printers are not that easy, and I appreciate your practical advice Eugen.    Any practical guidance or relating of experiences from anyone with ideas on compact bio-reactors designed for more or less continuous, rather than batch, production of lipid materials would be great.

Steve

BUGSS