Climate and resource protection are two of the major challenges of our time. Festo has been addressing these issues for some time: "We are transferring our automation technology expertise to biological processes. Here, too, nature is our great role model. It teaches us resource efficiency, as it knows no waste and no waste. By combining biological and technical processes, we scale up and accelerate solutions from the laboratory format and bring them to industrial application," explains Dr. Elias Knubben, Vice President Corporate Research and Innovation.

The cell as a factory

Living cells are the smallest factories in the world. Using photosynthesis, algae cells convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and chemical energy sources or organic materials in their chloroplasts. With automation technology, biomass can be cultivated efficiently, resource-efficiently and on a large scale in a closed cycle. According to Festo, everything that is currently produced from crude oil with immense CO2 emissions can also be obtained sustainably from algae. They are regarded as 'little climate savers' as they bind ten times more CO2 than land plants. Through their automated cultivation in bioreactors, this value can be increased by a factor of 10. The biomass obtained can be used in the chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries.

With the 'PhotoBionicCell' project, Festo presented the first bioreactor for the automated cultivation of algae in 2022. This year, the interdisciplinary bionics team will present the 'BionicCellFactory', a holistic bioprocess - from the optimized cultivation of algae on a large scale with continuous monitoring and analysis to harvesting, further processing and refinement of various components - without any high temperatures, high pressures or toxins, unlike chemical processes.

Production systems of the future

Festo sees the BionicCellFactory as a model factory and a universal blueprint for integrated production systems of the future. With the help of Festo's automation technology, it can be scaled up to any size. Bioreactors with a capacity of several thousand liters are needed to meet the future demand for renewable raw materials. Festo works with customers to develop intelligent control cabinet solutions for bioreactors and is continuing to expand its portfolio. In process control, the automation provider ensures stable and precise process control - this includes gassing and feeding strategies, control algorithms, soft sensors for determining biomass in real time and system concepts for biobased production processes. The company will also support plant operators with remote diagnostics, maintenance and control via the cloud.