The valuable compounds found within certain organisms which can be produced through industrial cultivation of microalgae offer us a promising alternative to products produced from fossil fuels. This project aims to allow the optimisation of the process control and quality management of the cultivation of these compounds by developing a real time process monitoring system. Electrospray Ionisation will be used with Ion Mobility Spectrometry to ionize aqueous samples and then analyse and quantify the components contained within them. As Ion Mobility Spectrometry is a rapid and robust technique, the development of an at-line monitoring system should be possible. This will allow the industrial production of active compounds using microalgae to reach its full potential.