Treatment of mixed wastewater by vertical rotating microalgae-bacteria symbiotic biofilm reactor

Mingran Yu; Li Wang; Pingzhong Feng; Zhongming Wang; Shunni Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2023.130057

Treatment of mixed wastewater by vertical rotating microalgae-bacteria symbiotic biofilm reactor

Bioresour Technol. 2024 Feb:393:130057. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2023.130057. Epub 2023 Nov 19.

Authors

Mingran Yu¹, Li Wang¹, Pingzhong Feng², Zhongming Wang³, Shunni Zhu³

Affiliations

¹ School of Energy Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, China; Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Guangzhou 510640, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New and Renewable Energy Research and Development, Guangzhou 510640, China.
² Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Guangzhou 510640, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New and Renewable Energy Research and Development, Guangzhou 510640, China. Electronic address: fengpz@ms.giec.ac.cn.
³ Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Guangzhou 510640, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New and Renewable Energy Research and Development, Guangzhou 510640, China.

PMID: 37984669
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2023.130057

Abstract

A novel vertical rotating microalgae-bacteria symbiotic biofilm reactor was built to treat the mixed wastewater containing municipal and soybean soaking wastewater. The reactor was operated in both sequential batch and semi-continuous modes. Under the sequential batch operation mode, the maximum removal rates for Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Nitrogen (TN), Total Phosphorus (TP), and Ammonia Nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N) of the mixed wastewater were 95.6 %, 96.1 %, 97.6 %, and 100 %, respectively. During the semi-continuous operation, the water discharge indices decreased gradually and eventually stabilized. At stabilization, the removal rates of COD, TN, and NH₄⁺-N achieved 98 %, 95 %, and 99.9 %, respectively. The maximum biomass productivity of the biofilm was 2.69 g·m^-2·d^-1. Additionally, the carbohydrate, protein and lipid comprised approximately 22 %, 51 % and 10 % of the dry weight of Chlorella. This study demonstrates the great potential of the microalgae-bacteria symbiotic biofilm system to treat food and domestic wastewater while harvesting microalgal biomass.

Keywords: Microalgae-bacteria symbiotic biofilm; Nutrient removal; Semi-continuous; Sequential batch; Sewage.

MeSH terms

Bacteria
Biofilms
Biomass
Chlorella*
Microalgae*
Nitrogen
Phosphorus
Wastewater

Substances

Wastewater
Nitrogen
Phosphorus