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Low biomass yield and nutrient removal efficiency are problems challenging the employment of microorganisms for wastewater remediation. Starch processing effluent (SPE) was used as a fermentation substrate to co-culture Chlorella vulgaris and Rhodotorula glutinis for biofuel feedstock production. Co-culture options were compared, and the optimal conditions were identified. The result shows that microalgae and yeast should be inoculated simultaneously at the beginning of SPE-based fermentation to achieve high biomass yield and the optimal inoculation ratio, light intensity, and temperature should be 2:1, 150 μmol/m2/s, and 25 °C, respectively. Under the optimal conditions, the lipid yield of microorganisms was 1.81 g/L and the carbon–conversion ratio reached 82.53% while lipid yield and the carbon–conversion ratio in a monoculture fell in the range of 0.79–0.81 g/L and 55.93–62.61%, respectively. Therefore, compared to the monoculture model, the co-fermentation of Chlorella vulgaris and Rhodotorula glutinis in starch processing effluent could convert nutrients to single-cell oil in a more efficient way. It should be noted that with the reduced concentration of residual organic carbon in effluent and the increased carbon–conversion ratio, co-fermentation of microalgae and yeast can be regarded as a promising and applicable strategy for starch processing effluent remediation and low-cost biofuel feedstock production.

The radiative properties of microalgae are basic parameters for analyzing light field distribution in photobioreactors (PBRs). With the growth of microalgae cell, their radiative properties will vary with growth time due to accumulation of pigment and lipid, cell division and metabolism. In this work, we report both experimental and theoretical evidence of temporal scaling behavior of the growth dependent radiative properties of microalgae cell suspensions. A new concept, the temporal scaling function (TSF), defined as the ratio of absorption or scattering cross-sections at growth phase to that at stationary phase, is introduced to characterize the temporal scaling. The temporal evolution and temporal scaling characteristics of the absoroption and scattering cross-sections of three example microalgae species, Chlorella vulgaris, Chlorella pyrenoidosa, and Chlorella protothecoides, were experimentally studied at spectral range 380 to 850 nm. It is shown that the TSFs of the absorption and scattering cross-sections for different microalgae species are approximately constant at different wavelength, which confirms theoretical predictions very well. With the aid of the temporal scaling relation, the radiative properties of microalgae at any growth time can be calculated based on those measured at stationary phase. The findings of this work will help the understanding of time dependent radiative properties of microalgae and facilitate their applications in light field analysis in PBRs design.

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