From laboratory to commercial production: a case study of a Spirulina (Arthrospira) facility in Musina, South Africa

A commercial scale Spirulina algal biotechnology production plant was built at Musina, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Worldwide, the dietary supplement industry is extremely lucrative and, for this reason, Spirulina was chosen as the candidate organism. The transition from the laboratory to large-scale commercial production is not a simple step, with many unforeseen problems, mostly related to design, scale, contamination, and external unknown variables. Downstream processing, product production, handling, quality, and marketing are additional challenges, not experienced at the laboratory level. Furthermore, large outdoor production units offer interesting experimental and research opportunities. In the operation of the ponds, the importance of the optimal areal density where all the available solar energy is absorbed by the biomass was clearly shown, where high production rates imply harvesting only the biomass greater than the optimal areal density concentrations.