Arduino Strobe Algae Bioreactor
Author: Jared Bouck
Project Cost: 60.00
Est Construction Time: 2.5 Hr
Required Skill Level: Basic Power Tools
Overview:
For some time I have been experimenting with algae and it has become a bit of a passion of mine. Enough of a passion in fact that I have built a sister site to InventGeek.com called AlgaeGeek.com where I have more of a focus on reactor designs that I make public domain. This has proven to be a very rewarding interest and I have had the good fourton to work with countless people and academic groups worldwide in a collaborative effort to explore the powers of algae. Ironically though the most common question is why are you growing algae? There are a few reasons for this and they range from Biofules to CO2 Sequestering and even hydrogen production.
I have a fond place in my heart for the arduino platform and I have found it to be very valuable in many large and small scale interactive projects I have done. So it was a natural evolution of thought to merge my interest in algae and arduino. The arduino allows for a broad amount of experimentation and automation for reactor features. There is a lot of exploration in growing algae and tricking it into reproducing faster to produce higher yields and this project facilitates some methods for experimenting.
This project is an easy to use platform for one technique that is broadly being used with to trick the algae into reproducing. Each algae species reacts differently in many ways to its environment and a light frequency that affects one algae may have no effect at all on another. So I have created an easy to build microcontroller platform that can be variably set and allows for easy configuration to any bioreactor. The LEDS can be swapped out to experiment with different colors and even UV for some hydrogen producing species. The platform is flexible enough to add other features like relay control for lighting, pumps, agitation and cooling and heating. While you may not be an algae fan like I am there is tremendous potential in this simple organism and inventgeek applauds researchers worldwide in their efforts and research.
The Source PDE can be downloaded
here.
