Effect of Algae in Bioremediation of Nitrate and Phosphate Content in Wastewater

Overview

Maintaining the quality of water is a huge challenge in the world. The progressive adoption of an urban, industrial lifestyle has deteriorated the quality of freshwater reservoirs and caused a huge challenge in the world in satisfying the demand and maintaining the quality of water. Industrial, Agricultural and Domestic processes contaminate water with chemical and biological pollutants that cannot be released into the environment until treated. Traditional wastewater treatment plants are effective in remediating suspended solids and many harmful elements, but they are not always effective in nitrate and phosphate content removal, causing these toxic elements to be discharged to the environment. Bioremediation, using naturally occurring microorganisms to degrade hazardous substances into less toxic or nontoxic substances, can be an effective and eco-friendly method in removing these elements. This project aims to determine the effectiveness of algae to bioremediate the nitrate and phosphate content from wastewater. To allow a healthy environment for the algae to grow and bioremediate nitrates and phosphates, a bioreactor system was designed using Erlenmeyer flasks connected with an air pump to provide a source of carbon dioxide in the flasks. A fluorescent light was used for fast photosynthesis of green algae. The bioreactor was used as an experimental prototype of the Algae-based Wastewater Treatment System (AWTS). Four different species of algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Arthrospira platensis, Scenedesmus quadricauda and Chlorella vulgaris, were tested with wastewater in this bioreactor setup for ten days over five trials, and the nitrate and phosphate contents were measured every day using HACH-DR-890 colorimeter to see how effectively the specimen remediated the nitrate and phosphate contents. The analysis shows all the four species were able to effectively remediate 93-96% of nitrate and 73-86% of phosphate. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (95.66%) was the most effective in nitrate remediation followed by Chlorella vulgaris (94.98%), Arthrospira platensis (94.57%) and Scenedesmus quadricauda (93.97%). In the phosphate remediation, Scenedesmus quadricauda (85.22%) was most the effective followed by Chlorella vulgaris (82.46%) Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (78.12%) and Arthrosphira platensis (73.36%). This project concludes that bioremediation using Algae is a viable technology in treating wastewater for nitrate and phosphate remediation in a natural and sustainable way in comparison to conventional treatment processes.

Competition history

• AJAS 2020 Category not listed

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