REFERENCE
[New Possibilities Emerge from Continuous Culture]
(The dawn of algae culture has finally arrived)
When I was involved in outdoor cultivation using a biodome system in Shizuoka Prefecture and Hawaii, continuous cultivation was not a dream. I was constantly fighting contamination (the inclusion of foreign matter that can be fatal to cultivation and force the interruption of cultivation. There are two types of contamination. One is when the algae grows faster than the algae you want to grow, and you end up with contaminated algae in an instant. The other is even more tragic, so-called zooplankton that eats up the algae you want to grow overnight.) Even if it wasn't actually that bad, it felt like contamination was frequent and we had to do cleaning work every time.
Lack of productivity in algae cultivation is fatal from the perspective of the manufacturer who produces the product.
Once commercialized, it cannot be overlooked if the product material does not come in.
Continuous cultivation means that the same harvest volume is produced stably during that time.
Another major advantage of continuous culture is that no seed culture is required during continuous culture, and the amount of seed culture to be inoculated at the time of inoculation is extremely small.
Normally, since long-term culture is not possible, a large amount of seed culture, 10% to 20% of the total culture volume, is intentionally prepared and all of it is harvested in a short period of time to avoid problems such as contamination. However, with our culture equipment, which allows long-term culture, only 1L of seed culture is required for the liquid volume per 2-ton equipment, which is 0.05% of the total volume.
Moreover, once culture begins, partial harvesting such as half the amount can be repeated, so no seed culture is required during that time. Therefore, in our case, we do not need the equipment, costs, or manpower required to prepare a huge amount of seed culture.
In a facility with 100 2-ton equipment, a total of 20 tons of seed culture is required for one inoculation, even with the usual 10% inoculation.
Generally, culture is scaled up by a factor of 10, so if you want to prepare 20 tons, you need to scale up three or four times from the laboratory flask level.
And with batch culture, this seed culture must be prepared every time you harvest, and if it is wiped out by contamination, it will all be wasted.
Looking at it this way, I think you can see how much of a difference there is in productivity, manpower, production costs, etc. between batch culture and continuous culture.