Influence of period light on cultivation of microalgae consortium for the treatment of tannery wastewaters from leather finishing stage

Abstract

Wastewater from the leather finishing step in tanneries contains high nutrient loads and toxic compounds, such as dyes, acids, toxic metals among others. To our best knowledge, for the first time, the influence of light period on the treatment of wet-end and finishing leather wastewaters with a microalgae consortium containing mainly Tetraselmis sp. was investigated. In this work, a microalgae consortium present the ability to grow well in this kind of tannery wastewater and was used for reducing nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonium, chemical and biochemical oxygen demands. Additionally, the wastewater presents high turbidity, which has an influence on the penetration of light, during the cultivations. Therefore, the influence of the illumination period was also studied: continuous light (24light), 12 h light/dark (12-light) and without light (0-light); in addition to the influence of compositions, 50% and 75% of raw wastewater. The maximum concentration of biomass in the wastewater was observed in the 24-light culture: 50R50S (1.40 gL -1 ) and 75R25S (1.04 gL -1 ), with maximum removals of total nitrogen (71.74%), total phosphorus (97.64%), total organic carbon (31.35%), chemical oxygen demand (56.70%), biological oxygen demand (20.68%) and ammonium (100%). These results show that this microalgae consortium is a promising alternative treatment for wastewaters of the leather wet-end and finishing steps.

Evaluation of the Light/Dark Cycle and Concentration of Tannery Wastewater in the Production of Biomass and Metabolites of Industrial Interest from Microalgae and Cyanobacteria

“…To the best of the author's knowledge, the literature on the utilization of tannery wastewater using microalgae is scarce. The use of microalgae consortia using tannery wastewater effluents after primary treatment has been reported [30]; similarly, the effect of light on the removal efficiency of Scenedesmus sp. has been reported for this type of wastewater [25].…”

Current perspective on wastewater treatment using photobioreactor for Tetraselmis sp.: an emerging and foreseeable sustainable approach

“…Different Tetraselmis strains have been reported for the treatment of several industrial wastewaters. For example, leather process industries generate tannery wastewater that contains a high nutrient load, Pena et al (2020) reported that Tetraselmis sp. in consortia with other microalgae showed maximum removal efficiency for tannery wastewater.…”

“…with other microalgae can increase the nutrient removal efficiency. For example, Pena et al (2020) studied the effect of consortia of microalgae especially Tetraselmis sp. to treat the tannery wastewater.…”

“…Furthermore, it can treat various types of wastewaters generated from urban (Costa et al 2004), municipal (Reyimu and Özçimen 2017), and Fig. 1 Different sources of wastewater resulting in environmental pollution, spreading mediator, and the hazardous effect on human and animal health industrial (Pena et al 2020) sectors along with heavy metals remediation (Amit et al 2017). It can also be cultivated in a wide variety of PBR to achieving higher biomass productivity.…”

Water reuse in the post-tanning process: minimizing environmental impact of leather production

“…Salts are not efficiently removed in conventional treatment (de la Luz-Pedro et al 2019; Kozik et al 2019;Pena et al 2020;Hansen et al 2021c). Furthermore, salts may cause problems for the reuse of effluents in the post-tanning process.…”