Bioremediation of Crude Oil by Haematococcus Pluvialis: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Nowadays, oil pollution is one of the main environmental problems. The current methods for recovering spills mainly involve chemical agents, but scientific research has focused on more natural and less harmful techniques for the environment, including a consortium of bacteria and microalgae to clean up water contaminated by hydrocarbons. The purpose of this preliminary study was to evaluate the ability of a microalga belonging to Chlorophyceae to grow in the presence of crude oil and remove the principal contaminants. H. pluvialis, which is usually used for nutraceutical purposes, thanks to the production of astaxanthin, was able to grow in anaerobic conditions, varying its metabolism from autotrophic to heterotrophic, exploiting the carbon present in the solution deriving from the presence of 1% of crude oil. Furthermore, the results of bioremediation showed a relevant reduction in chemical pollutants such as nitrate, fluoride, sulfate, and phosphate. The most important aspect of the study was the reduction after 160 days in the hydrocarbon concentration inside not only the culture medium (−32%) but also the algal biomass (−80.25%), demonstrating an optimized degradation rather than a simple absorption inside the alga.

Nejayote and Food Waste Leachate as a Medium for Scenedesmus acutus and Haematococcus pluvialis Production: A Mixture Experimental Design

“…Nevertheless, on day 20, the concentration of H. pluvialis increased to nearly 3.3 g/L (Figure 2b). The H. pluvialis growth curve tendency observed in this study is in accordance with the results of other studies [25,26]. The ability of different nejayote and food waste leachate combinations (T1-5) to act as a growing medium for S. acutus and promote growth was investigated.…”

“…Scenedesmus acutus and Haematococcus pluvialis were obtained from the crop collection of the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR), Mexico. The strain was preserved in the baseline medium Bold (BBM), containing the following compounds in mg/L: NaNO 3 (250), CaCl (25). The concentration of trace elements in (mg L −1 ) was the following: EDTA (50), KOH (31), FeSO O (0.49).…”