[danielford]

I couldn't find enough information to figure that out. I started by looking for Calleja's articles on PubMed, but nothing popped up. Eventually I found his LinkedIn profile, but all it had was the link to his company:

http://www.fermentalg.com/

The parts of that website that aren't in french were useless for figuring out how it works. To speculate based on my incredibly limited information, it looks like he might have some GFP-transgenic algae that fluoresce when the light inside the apparatus hits them. This means his setup isn't necessarily carbon-neutral since you still need electricity to power the lamp. Assuming I'm right it may also be way more expensive than it looks. I remember the bulbs for fluorescent microscopes were one or two hundred dollars back when I was in graduate school, and the one they're using is way bigger.

The stuff about algae consuming carbon dioxide is true. They're photoautotrophs. But I'm not sure what the advantage of this is over just putting giants vats of algae everywhere, or letting them do their business in the ocean.