In addition, at the initial sucrose concentration of 0.5–1.0 g/L, the sucrose level gradually decreased and was nearly completely depleted at the end of cultivation. When a higher initial sucrose concentration of 5–10 g/L was used, approximately 3.0 g/L of sucrose remained at the end of cultivation. In our experiments, high concentrations of sucrose have been shown to
inhibit microalgal growth, at least for a considerable period of time. It was likely that algal cells grown on high concentration of substrates require a lag period to adopt the bioreactor operation (Perez-Garcia et al., 2011).