Comprehensive evaluation of a cost-effective method of culturing Chlorella pyrenoidosa with unsterilized piggery wastewater for biofuel production

Zhang, W., Li, J., Zhang, Z., Fan, G., Ai, Y., Gao, Y. and Pan, G. ORCID: 0000-0003-0920-3018, 2019. Comprehensive evaluation of a cost-effective method of culturing Chlorella pyrenoidosa with unsterilized piggery wastewater for biofuel production. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 12 (1): 69. ISSN 1754-6834

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Abstract

Background: The utilization of Chlorella for the dual goals of biofuel production and wastewater nutrient removal is highly attractive. Moreover, this technology combined with flue gas (rich in CO2) cleaning is considered to be an effective way of improving biofuel production. However, the sterilization of wastewater is an energy-consuming step. This study aimed to comprehensively evaluate a cost-effective method of culturing Chlorella pyrenoidosa in unsterilized piggery wastewater for biofuel production by sparging air or simulated flue gas, including algal biomass production, lipid production, nutrient removal rate and the mutual effects between algae and other microbes.

Results: The average biomass productivity of C. pyrenoidosa reached 0.11 g L−1 day−1/0.15 g L−1 day−1 and the average lipid productivity reached 19.3 mg L−1 day−1/30.0 mg L−1 day−1 when sparging air or simulated flue gas, respectively. This method achieved fairish nutrient removal efficiency with respect to chemical oxygen demand (43.9%/55.1% when sparging air and simulated flue gas, respectively), ammonia (98.7%/100% when sparging air and simulated flue gas, respectively), total nitrogen (38.6%/51.9% when sparging air or simulated flue gas, respectively) and total phosphorus (42.8%/60.5% when sparging air or simulated flue gas, respectively). Culturing C. pyrenoidosa strongly influenced the microbial community in piggery wastewater. In particular, culturing C. pyrenoidosa enriched the abundance of the obligate parasite Vampirovibrionales, which can result in the death of Chlorella.

Conclusion: The study provided a comprehensive evaluation of culturing C. pyrenoidosa in unsterilized piggery wastewater for biofuel production. The results indicated that this cost-effective method is feasible but has considerable room for improving. More importantly, this study elucidated the mutual effects between algae and other microbes. In particular, a detrimental effect of the obligate parasite Vampirovibrionales on algal biomass and lipid production was found.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: Biotechnology for Biofuels
Creators: Zhang, W., Li, J., Zhang, Z., Fan, G., Ai, Y., Gao, Y. and Pan, G.
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
Date: 1 April 2019
Volume: 12
Number: 1
ISSN: 1754-6834
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1186/s13068-019-1407-xDOI
1407Publisher Item Identifier
Rights: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Divisions: Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by: Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added: 12 Apr 2019 13:15
Last Modified: 03 May 2019 14:38
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/36243

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