Phytoremediation of agriculture runoff by filamentous algae poly-culture for biomethane production, and nutrient recovery for secondary cultivation of lipid generating microalgae

Co-digestion of Wastewater-Grown Filamentous Algae With Sewage Sludge Improves Biomethane Production and Energy Balance Compared to Thermal, Chemical, or Thermochemical Pretreatments

“…Removal rates of phosphate (0.033 g m −2 d −1 ), nitrate (0.19 g m −2 d −1 ), and ammonia (0.14 g m −2 d −1 ) were low given the relatively low initial concentrations of the floways. These nutrient removal rates were comparable to the values reported for algal turf scrubber R systems (Bohutskyi et al, 2016a), but lower than the values observed in high rate algal ponds (Park and Craggs, 2010;Gutiérrez et al, 2016) and verticalalgal-biofilm enhanced raceway ponds (Zhang et al, 2018c). In the initial portion of the experiment, nitrate concentrations increased while ammonia concentrations declined.…”

“…Treatment technologies using algae to remove nutrients from wastewater hold promise as a more sustainable alternative to traditional wastewater treatment (Park et al, 2011;Bohutskyi et al, 2015bBohutskyi et al, , 2016b. While there are numerous methods for growing algae in wastewater (Prajapati et al, 2013), filamentous algal treatment systems are easy to harvest and dewater, operate under a broad range of environmental conditions, reduce nutrients to low concentrations, and produce large quantities of renewable biomass (Adey et al, 2011;Bohutskyi et al, 2016a). Indeed, algal turf scrubbers R can be used to treat aquatic ecosystems, contaminated groundwater, municipal sewage, and industrial/agricultural wastewater (Adey et al, 2011;Bohutskyi et al, 2016a).…”

“…One practical approach is anaerobic digestion (AD) of the algae to generate bio-methane (Bohutskyi and Bouwer, 2013;Bohutskyi et al, 2018b). For filamentous algae, typical of turf scrubbers, AD may be preferred to the extraction of lipids for biodiesel considering low lipid composition of macro-algae (Bohutskyi et al, 2016a). Because AD methane production can be inhibited by the unbalanced carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratios and the resistance of algal cell walls to degradation (Prajapati et al, 2013), realistic and energy-effective methods for enhanced biodigestion filamentous algae are needed to realize the full potential of coupled turf scrubber-biogas systems (Adey et al, 2011).…”

Large-Scale Waste Bio-Remediation Using Microalgae Cultivation as a Platform

“…Table 5. Bioremediation data (in mMol L −1 ) from literature [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] and from this current study, presenting efficiency of nutrient uptake by algal cultivation, compared with struvite nutrient recovery, HRAP and ATS. Due to the considerable volumes and flow rates involved in the wastewater industry, systems tend to be large-scale.…”

Can algae-based technologies be an affordable green process for biofuel production and wastewater remediation?

“…In specific, nitrogen removal efficiencies in synthetic and horticultural wastewater were 59-99% and 20-86%, respectively. However, there was a significant difference in phosphorus removal due to chemical precipitation of phosphorus in horticultural wastewater (Liu et al, 2016) Bohutskyi et al (2016). remove nutrients in agricultural storm water by ATS.…”