A novel photo-respirometry method to characterize consortia in microalgae-related wastewater treatment processes

Abstract

In this paper, a new photo-respirometry method for determining the rates of the main metabolic processes of microalgae-bacteria consortia in microalgae-based wastewater treatment processes has been developed and tested. The proposed protocol consists on applying dark and light periods to a microalgae-bacteria consortium in the presence of different substrates and measuring the rate of oxygen production. This allows determining the activity of microalgae, heterotrophic bacteria and nitrifying bacteria separately.The method has been optimized in terms of the operation strategy, including the starvation period required, the biomass concentration and the irradiance during the measurements. Results show that a starvation period of one to three days is necessary depending on the nutrient concentration. The optimal experimental conditions determined were a biomass concentration of 0.5 g/L and an irradiance of 200 μmol photons/m2·s. Furthermore, microalgae-bacteria samples from seven photobioreactors (indoor and outdoor) with different nutrient sources have been evaluated applying the methodology proposed. Regardless of the wastewater type, the microalgae activity is the main metabolic process, with heterotrophic activity increasing along with the chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the wastewater. Nitrifying activity was only observed when high ammonium concentrations were present. The developed method is a powerful tool to adequately manage and operate wastewater treatment processes using microalgae/bacteria consortia, providing valuable information to model wastewater treatment systems with microalgae and determine kinetic parameters.