Light Light Algae: How Light Affects Algae Growth

Abstract

Algae is a photosynthetic eukaryotic organism that can often be involved with the production of biofuels.  Biofuels are produced from the oils that algae produce; more specifically the lipids. The growth rate of algae is based on photosynthesis and the light that is available to the organism.  For our experiment, we are testing the growth of algae in high intensity light, control light (room light), no light, and blue light by measuring cell count and chlorophyll a that the algae produced under each condition.  We hypothesize that the higher the intensity of light, the more algae will be produced because there will be more energy available for the algae to grow. Also, the algae growing under the blue light will produce less algae because only one wavelength is absorbed.  After collecting data, we found that the algae that was exposed to the most light produced the highest cell count and chlorophyll a levels. Biofuel producers can improve their efficiency by shining high intensity light on algae to increase the growth rate.