New plant for the production of microalgae opened enormous increase of production capacity. The greatest shortcoming of renewable energy sources such as Sun and wind is that they are not always available and no storage of energy is possible. The electric energy produced must be consumed as soon as it is created. The solution to the problem is the conversion of wind energy into bio-gas or diesel, what can most effectively carried out by micro-algae. Conventional plant breeding of microalgae work with daylight and produce up to 20,000 liters of fuel per hectare. Art lighting system allow an increase in the production volume to the machine. This came not in practice due to the huge investment costs on lamps and the electric energy consumption so far as plant. Berlin researchers have now registered a Photobiorekator patent, which removes these disadvantages and so far not promises unprecedented production capacity per unit area.
The core of the development is the fusion of bioreactor and Lighting equipment to a plant. The maximum packing density of algal suspension carrier (piping) is achieved by a specific and yet very simple design of the reactor. The low pressure cold cathode tube principle is used to the lighting of the algae by design resulting cave rooms to the light source will be converted. An increase in the productive amount of biomass to the 200 is achieved through the use of art light supply and a compression of space needs at one-sixth compared to daylight Photobioreactors can be further increased through multi-story building. As a side effect the investment costs for lamps to more than 80% compared with a lighting with traditional fluorescent lamps are reduced and the electrical energy supply is cut in half. Due to the high amount of produced biomass, algae need much more CO2 to grow.