PLANKTON 43 



by increasing the amount of illumination, or, in fact, by doing anything 

 that promoted faster growth of the desired algae. 



Much was accomplished in America from 1950 to 1953 under the 

 guidance of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. They helped sponsor 

 such investigators as Spoehr, Milner, Davis, Myers, and Krauss, with much 

 of the work done in the Department of Plant Biology at Stanford. Here 

 studies were performed not only with various types of algae and nutri- 

 ments, but also with differing forms of culture equipment. The latter 

 included large bottles, rocking trays, and plastic and glass tubing. The 

 culmination of the Carnegie studies was the establishment of a large pilot 

 plant for Chlorella culture in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Arthur D. 

 Little, Inc., a consulting research and development organization. Three 

 large-scale culture units were developed and studied. The last, and best, 

 consisted of a massive plastic tubing in U-shape, set up on a roof-top with 

 free exposure to sunlight. It was equipped with a centrifugal pump to 

 circulate the culture, a measured inflow of carbon dioxide (5 per cent in 

 air), a heat exchanger for cooling the culture, a harvesting system, and 

 apparatus to freeze or spray dry the harvested material. From this study, 

 it was concluded that with this type of pilot plant, 20 gm./sq. meter/ day 

 could be realized, equivalent to 17.5 tons Chlorella per acre per year. 



Pilot plant studies were also carried on in Israel and in Japan. The 

 former were begun in 1951 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem under 

 government sponsorship. The latter were done in Tokyo in 1952 at the 

 Tokugawa Institute for Biological Research; Tamiya, the director of this 

 group, spent some time as guest worker in the Carnegie Institution labora- 

 tories in Stanford through a fellowship supported by the United States 

 Office of Naval Research. 



Experiments on mass culture of algae are also being carried on by seg- 

 ments of private industry. An example is the reported work of Pruess and 

 his colleagues 232 for a pharmaceutical concern on algal culture in carboys 

 and in deep tank fermentations. Kindred to the latter is the growing of 

 algae in so-called "oxidation ponds," with the double purpose of sewage 

 disposal and formation of algal protein suitable for feeding. Renn 233 has 

 estimated that domestic sewage from a community of 10,000 could pro- 

 duce nearly 1,400 pounds of protein daily if properly treated. Oswald 

 and his colleagues 234 at the University of California are also enthusiastic 

 proponents of this method. One eager college professor 22 has already 

 designed a house with an algal pond on its flat roof. No comment is 

 offered on the monotony of having to stick to one brand of sewage ! 



