My name is Binh Nguyen. My domain of expert is environmental biotechnology. That is a longer and gross phrase to say that I only know how to grow one species of microalgae. My full resume is presented in the main page.

Microalgae are micron-sized organisms, which is different than seaweeds you see with sushi rolls called macroalgae. The interest of growing microalgae, such as Chlorella, Spirulina, Haematococcus, is for supplements and healthcare applications. Recent interest in microalgae for bio-energy stemmed from the superb quantum yield, that is the ratio of how many electrons fixed into microalgae biomass by the given electrons equivalent in light stream.

In the lab scale, light energy given microalgae is usually by fluorescent bulbs with a fast transition to Light Emitting Diode (LED) because of the energy efficiency per a unit of light emission give an electrical input. So I started to read and played with LED. Then I needed to learn to control the intensity, the pattern of change, and how one question led to a bunch of others.

Eventually, I played with LEDs to supply electronmagnetic radiation or photon for microalgae in 2-14L reactors, called photobioreactor. And with try and fail approach, I used Arduino to collect the temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, then to control fans to keep the reactor cool enough. During that search, one of my achievement is to design a system to monitor and control biomass of microalgae using a infra-red sensor from a washing machine.

That not all this blog is about, but this learning journey is the starter of other journeys. And this blog is where I jotted down my thoughts, some concretes, some nonsense, and most of the posts are on ends of experimentation: try and see how does it fail!

Disclosure: Since this is a personal blog, and I certainly present my perspective, sometimes my projection, and while the writing applied to me with absolutely no intention to transmit any inaccurate information, I do make errors and present bias from my experience. So write to me, and let me know what you think.

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