ABSTRACT
The recovery of microalgal biomass from low concentration suspensions is essential for processing into biomass and value-added products. Typical concentrations of commercial autotrophic microalgal cultures are 2–5 g/L. While mixotrophic and heterotrophic cultures may reach higher concentrations, the autotrophic cultures are more common, and their concentration usually cannot be high to avoid self-shadowing. Therefore, concentrating the cultures post-harvest is necessary to reduce volumes, thus for lowering energy requirements for other operations downstream. Microalgal biomass processing depends on its final use, but drying may be useful both for stabilization (e.g. for food and feed microalgae) and for further processing (e.g. biomass for lipid extraction).
