Scale-Up Cultivation Trials

Optimize cultivation performance across increasing production scales

Cultivation performance often changes as system size increases. Factors such as light distribution, mixing, nutrient availability, and gas transfer can affect both growth rates, biomass yield, and quality. A structured scale-up process helps identify and address these challenges, reducing technical uncertainty and paving the way for investment in larger cultivation systems.

Pure Algae offers stepwise scale-up cultivation trials designed to optimize cultivation performance and evaluate scalability from laboratory systems to larger production volumes.

Who is this service intended for?

This service is relevant for companies, researchers, and future producers of seaweed who have established a promising strain or species and want to scale cultivation, while maintaining performance and achieving project-specific production goals.

How we do it

We conduct stepwise cultivation trials across multiple system sizes to evaluate scalability, optimize cultivation parameters, and identify scale-dependent requirements.

Our scale-up workflow includes:

• Scale-up from 4 L laboratory bioreactors up to 200 L cultivation systems

• Further scale-up to 1100-10,000 L systems where relevant

• Evaluation of growth performance, biomass yield, and biomass quality across scales

• Systematic optimization of cultivation parameters at each scale

• Identification of scale-dependent limitations and operational bottlenecks

• Development and testing of strategies to overcome scale-up challenges

• Biomass harvesting, sampling, measurements, and performance monitoring throughout the process

• Data analysis and comparison of cultivation performance across scales

All trials are conducted using Pure Algae's cultivation infrastructure and are tailored to the customer's objectives, target application, and success criteria.

What you gain from the Cultivation Trials

The primary outcome of this service is a cultivation strategy that has been tested and optimized from laboratory scale, to 1100-10.000 L systems.

Deliverables are tailored to the individual project and may include:

• A validated scale-up strategy for larger cultivation systems

• Optimized cultivation parameters across scales

• Performance data and cultivation insights

• Recommendations for future pilot-scale or commercial production

• Identification of critical bottlenecks and mitigation strategies

• Documentation supporting investment decisions and further scale-up activities

Why stepwise scale-up?

Successful cultivation at laboratory scale, does not guarantee successful cultivation at larger volumes. Stepwise scale-up generates the knowledge needed to understand how cultivation performance changes with increasing system size, reduces implementation risk, and provides a stronger foundation for future investments in production capacity.

By identifying challenges early on and optimizing cultivation conditions throughout the scale-up process, this service helps clear the path towards larger-scale production and commercial implementation.