With summer looming, and temperatures (hopefully) rising, we are soon to see the familiar algal blooms in the canal by Little Venice near our offices. While many of our employees love the stroll along the waterway, it got us thinking about what differentiates our algae from the ones we see on our everyday commute. 

It’s safe to say that algae have had their bad press, and many perceive them as doing more harm than good. We’re here to change your perspective, and persuade you to look at our beloved canals through a whole new lens. 

Whilst unmanaged, algal blooms can indeed become harmful to wildlife. However, when well taken care of, algae can feed on the waste in our waterways, cleaning it up for renewed use. With many schemes nowadays trying to clean up our water systems and allow wildlife to flourish again, we are excited to see algae as part of this journey. 

There are some similarities between our algae and those you can spot along the canal. Both grow with access to nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and both flourish in sunny environments. Naturally, similarly to plants and animals, different strains of algae thrive in different conditions, and ours are highly well regulated and well fed. 

We grow our algae in incubators that are highly specialised, where we can control all sorts of conditions, from temperature to culture shaking speed. This wasn’t always the case - when we first started out, our CTO needed a low-cost incubator which wouldn’t come with all the fancy add-ons, and converted a wine cooler into a fully functioning growth chamber, which we still use to this day. 

Whilst it would be cheaper to be able to pick the canal algae and use them to build a fully functioning biofuel production facility, sadly, we cannot. Our algae are synthetically modified to continuously and efficiently produce large quantities of oil, which can then be collected and used for fuel.

That is where our fantastic team of scientists comes into play, with their constant work on troubleshooting the different species of algae to predict and regulate how well they will respond to our manipulation. 

There you have it, the comparisons of our algae at Phycobloom, and the algae spotted along the canal. If you’re interested in learning more about Phycobloom, give us a follow-on LinkedIn or reach out. We are always happy to answer questions and bring more awareness to the huge potential of algae. 

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