DEVELOPMENT OF A SPECIALIZED RADIATION SOURCE FOR CULTIVATION OF CHLORELLA MICROALGAE IN LABORATORY CONDITIONS
A number of promising biotechnologies with numerous and diverse applications are based on the cultivation of chlorella microalgae in artificial conditions. One of the most important conditions for the growth of algae is the creation of illumination with a specific intensity and spectral composition. Photobioreactors, devices for cultivating chlorellafor industrial purposesare focused on obtaining large amounts of biomass.Accordingly, they are not suitable for laboratory experiments, which are characterized by the use of several small-volume samples that differ in the conditions of culture development created in them (for example, the composition of the nutrient medium). To compare the results obtained by changing one of the factors, it is necessary to fix other factors, including the illumination of the samples. Adaptation of various types of industrially produced lamps for research purposes usually has the disadvantage of the non-uniformity of illumination of the working area of the experimental setup. This factor reduces the validity of the experimental results and complicates their interpretation and reproducibility. The paper presents the development of a specialized LED radiation source for growing chlorella microalgae in laboratory conditions which allow for increasing the reproducibility of the experimental results by creating a uniform illumination of the test samples. An approximate analytical and numerical calculation of the illumination of the working area is presented. A high degree of uniformity of the illumination created in the experimental setup is shown. The developed lamp is used in the experiments of the Laboratory of Ecology and Immunology of the Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.