Integration of microalgal technology with plasmolysis for the treatment of wastewater

Abstract

Microalgae-based wastewater treatment is a promising biorefinery strategy for ensuring environmental and economic sustainability. While, integrating microalgae treatment with micro plasma technology resulted enormous increase in wastewater treatment efficiency. Initially, plasma was ignited to remove colors from textile wastewater (TWW), which resulted 83.47 % color removal after 20 minutes. Furthermore, Chlorella vulgaris (C. vulgaris) was used in this study to bioremediate textile effluent. Ozone treated wastewater (WW) and textile wastewater are used to grow C. vulgaris. A control was established by cultivating in freshwater with BG11 media. The maximum growth (as measured by OD680) was observed in BG-11 (4.8 ± 0.4 OD680), followed by OZONE treated WW (3.4 ± 0.22 OD680). Furthermore, the BG-11 medium removed the most COD (60%), followed by TWW (56%) and ozone treated WW (49%). The intake of (N-〖NO〗_3^(-1)), and (P-〖PO〗_4^(-3)) increased as the development of microalgae increased. Therefore, BG-11 had the highest (N-〖NO〗_3^(-1)) removal (96%), followed by TWW (94%), and ozone treated WW (92%). Similarly, BG-11 medium achieved the maximum (P-〖PO〗_4^(-3)) elimination (92%) when compared to the TWW (88%) and ozone treated WW (80%). The maximum lipid yield (mg/g) by solvent extraction was extracted from ozone treated WW (657 mg/g) in comparison BG-11 (235.5 mg/g) and TWW (596.3 mg/g) media. All these results suggest that C. vulgaris can be cultivated in ozone treated wastewater as well as TWW.