2020 journal article

Tribonema sp. and Chlorella zofingiensis co-culture to treat swine wastewater diluted with fishery wastewater to facilitate harvest

BIORESOURCE TECHNOLOGY, 297.

By: P. Cheng*, J. Cheng n, K. Cobb*, C. Zhou*, N. Zhou*, M. Addy*, P. Chen*, X. Yan*, R. Ruan*

co-author countries: China 🇨🇳 United States of America 🇺🇸
author keywords: Tribonema sp.; Chlorella zofingiensis; Co-culture; Swine wastewater; Fishery wastewater; Harvest efficiency
MeSH headings : Animals; Biomass; Chlorella; Coculture Techniques; Fisheries; Microalgae; Nitrogen; Swine; Wastewater
Source: Web Of Science
Added: January 13, 2020

Cultivating microalgae on wastewaters is an effective way to produce algal biomass whereas harvesting microalgae is a costly operation. This study we examined the feasibility of co-culturing a high-value microalga with an auto-flocculating strain to enable efficient recovery of biomass. Experiments were conducted to co-cultivate Chlorella zofingiensis with Tribonema sp. on swine wastewater diluted by fishery wastewater under different conditions. The result showed the optimal inoculum ratio of Tribonema sp. to Chlorella zofingiensis was 1:1. The removal efficiencies of pollutants (NH4+-N, TN, TP, and COD) and lipid content were high when the co-culture ratios of Tribonema sp. were high. Also, some larger chain fatty acids, specifically C20:5 and C22:6 were present when the two strains co-culture. The recovery efficiency increased with the increasing proportion of auto-flocculating Tribonema sp.. Algae co-culture has the potential to address limitations in substrate utilization by individual strains, also improve the recovery of biomass.