Development of a smart incubator for microalgae cultivation in food production: A case study of Spirulina

Abstract

With the increasing awareness of nutritious food with environmentally friendly resources, microalgae cultivation is a promising sector to support the production of high-quality food. However, state-of-the-art cultivation solutions are mostly performed in large-scale settings at the industrial level. There is limited research that investigates the feasibility of developing small-scale solutions to support home-based microalgae cultivation. Hence, this study contributed to the Smart Microalgae Incubator system (SMIS), a novel and easy-to-manage IoT-based solution for small-scale home-based Spirulina cultivation. The SMIS is designed with functionalities such as growth monitoring and controlling, automated biomass harvesting, and medium recycling. A control center is included to control these operations based on the sensor readings of temperature, pH, water level, dissolved oxygen, and total dissolved solids in the main cultivation tank. Moreover, the turbidity center is designed to measure the turbidity level in the main tank so that the readiness for biomass harvesting is determined to trigger the automated harvesting. The proposed SMIS is utilized for a 125-day Spirulina cultivation and benchmarked with a control tank that cultivates Spirulina manually. Analysis of the growth rate and nutrient contents of Spirulina cultivated with both systems showed that the SMIS achieved comparable performance. Specifically, the harvested biomass at day 60 contains higher levels of protein (69.1 %), crude fat (10.3 %), and fiber (15.7 %). To conclude, the proposed SMIS is a significant and sustainable solution ideal for home-based Spirulina cultivation as a nutrient-rich food source. Further research is recommended to evaluate its effectiveness for cultivating other microalgae species. System refinement is also suggested to investigate its applicability for large-scale implementation.