Enhancement of the photosynthetic and removal performance for microalgae-based technologies by co-culture strategy and strigolactone induction

Abstract

In this study, digestate and biogas were treated simultaneously based on fungi-microalgae symbionts and fungi-microalgae-bacteria symbionts, respectively. The effects of strigolactone (GR24) on the biomass of symbionts and photosynthesis of algae, and purification of digestate and biogas were explored. With the induction of GR24, the metabolism of microorganism-microalgae systems and photosynthesis of microalgae were enhanced causing the rapid growth of the symbionts, further strengthening the purification performance of the systems. Moreover, the GR24 enhanced the CO₂ removal performance of the co-culture systems via increasing the carbonic anhydrase activity of microalgae cells. The fungi-microalgae-bacteria co-culture strategy with GR24 induction was found to obtain great photosynthetic and removal performance, possessing the 73.54 ± 6.83% CO₂ removal rate and 88.61 ± 8.24% COD removal rate.

Keywords: Chlorella vulgaris; Co-culture system; Photosynthetic performance; Removal performance; Strigolactone.