Table 1.

Main advantages and disadvantages of open pond and closed culture systems for microalgae biomass production

Cultivation system	Advantages	Disadvantages
Open	Low operating costs	Process and contamination controls with low efficiency
	Easy to scale up	High evaporation rate
	Cooling through direct contact with atmosphere	Requires lots of land to produce
	Good gas interchange	Poor light penetration
		High loss of CO2
		High harvesting costs
		Low production performance
		Low control over growth factors (e.g. evaporation, temperature)
PBR	Lower contamination risk	High operating costs
	High production performance	High construction cost
	Relatively low harvesting cost	Difficult to scale up
	High light use efficiency
	Requires low land to produce
	High control parameters of culture
	Low loss of CO2