Innovative and sustainable cultivation strategy for the production of Spirulina platensis using anaerobic digestates diluted with residual geothermal water

Abstract

The following study investigates the possibility of growing the Spirulina platensis (S. platensis) cyanobacteria on two agro-industrial anaerobic digestion (AD) digestates diluted with geothermal water. The two digestates (FAWD: Food and Agricultural Wastes Digestate and CDD: Cheese Diary Digestate) were selected based on their different chemical characteristics, attributed to the type of feedstock and the operating conditions used during the AD process. In the first part of the study, a screening experiment was performed in 200 mL glass tubes to evaluate the appropriate dilution factor to generate the maximum S. platensis growth using both AD digestates individually and geothermal water as sustainable alternative dilution agent. Based on the different growth parameters measured, dilution rates of 5x and 40x were chosen for CDD and FAWD respectively, as a trade-off between growth performances and quantity of water to use. Volumetric productivities of 33 ± 1 mg/L/d and 56 ± 8 mg/L/d combined with maximal concentrations of 0.52 ± 0.02 g/L and 0.69 ± 0.02 g/L were achieved when cultivating S. platensis on CDD and FAWD, respectively. In the second part, the selected experimental results were scaled-up to 6 L flat panels bioreactors and S. platensis biomass productivities of 71 and 101 mg/L/d were obtained for CDD and FAWD, respectively using sodium bicarbonate as inorganic carbon source. When regulating the pH to 8.5 with carbon dioxide (CO₂) injection, cultures were able to produce up to 1.13 g/L and 0.79 g/L of S. platensis corresponding to biomass productivities of 81 and 136 mg/L/d for CDD and FAWD, respectively. In addition, S. platensis properly assimilated the ammonium present in the digestate-based culture media, with removal efficiency up to 98% in the case of the CDD substrate. The characterization of the final S. platensis biomass revealed the presence of high concentration of carbohydrates (48.6-70.3 % of dry weight) in the culture supplemented with both AD digestates. The experimental findings show the potential of reusing liquid digestate, CO₂ as well as geothermal water for the sustainable production of carbohydrate-rich S. platensis biomass.

Keywords: Biomass productivity; CO(2) uptake; Circular economy; Culture medium; Effluent.