The Phenobottle, an open-source photobioreactor platform for environmental simulation

Microalgal biotechnologies have great potential for biofuels, bioremediation, food technologies and more recently the production of pharmaceuticals. However, a major obstacle to use microalgae industrially is the optimisation of environmental parameters to the microalgal species of interest (light, CO₂ availability, nutrients, etc.). If one aims to optimise productivity, the use of photobioreactors (PBRs) is essential. However, the restrictive design of the few commercial bioreactors and their elevated costs (> $10,000 USD ea.) prevents their use as a mainstream tool. To propel microalgal research we present the Phenobottle, a fully customizable open-source PBR platform (consisting of hardware and software). As the optimisation of photosynthesis is a central process to increasing the productivity of microalgae, the Phenobottle is equipped with a chlorophyll a fluorometer and growth sensors to probe metabolic performance in near-real time. An introductory guide is provided and the Phenobottle's sensors are benchmarked against commercial instruments using the model green alga Chlorella vulgaris.