Innovative Stirring Blade Technology to increase profitability in the industry of algae culture based on CFD techniques (SBTech)

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Microalgae have gained recent attention as sustainable and valuable inputs in many industries: biodiesel, human food, feed, pharmaceutical industry, cosmetics. Paradoxically, European microalgae production is not catching up with this growth, and USA and China are the global leaders. This negative trade balance implies that various European industries depend on international algae suppliers. Current prevailing technique for algae cultivation are the open raceways (RW) ponds, which still present a high improvement potential to improve their productivity, and hence thire profitability. Technological advances are needed to attract new entrepreneurs to this emerging industry. Our SBTech project aims at improving the RW system by applying a solution based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology, which will decrease energy consumption while increasing algae growth rate. Our solution reduces the production cost per kg of dried algae by 40%. At this cost level, microalgae become a promising raw material for many industries. In a second stage, SBTech will also be applicable to Photobioreactors, the second cultivation technique in importance. In Europe, algae industry is concentrated on a large number of small producers. Due to the rapid growth (7%) in three years there will be over 200 farms in Europe, mainly located in France, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. However, forecasts are more optimistic, if we also consider the forthcoming boosting of microalgae for wastewater treatment (WWT): thousands of small WWT plants will be built to comply with current regulations. Our target customers are promoters/constructors of microalgae farms and algae-related industrial equipment manufacturers. There are not large international competitors in Europe, only local companies, and our system largely overcomes the alternative solutions. Based on our preliminary data, by the 3rd year from market launch, cumulative turnover will reach €11.33M, with a cumulative profit of €4.24M.