Abstract
This paper presents a novel simulation tool to understand and analyze biological models for wastewater treatment processes using microalgae. The models for this type of processes are very complex to be analyzed because of the very different phenomena, variables and parameters involved. The model already included in the tool has been validated at controlled conditions simulating outdoor ones, it being useful to simulate real outdoor cultures. The major contribution of the proposed tool is that these models can be easily and interactively simulated and compared. The tool allows simulating biological models only considering microalgae or including the microalgae-bacteria consortium. Moreover, the simulations can be done only using the solar radiation contribution or by adding the environmental and bacteria effects as cardinal terms. Furthermore, the effects of the wastewater properties or different microalgae strains can be evaluated. The interactive simulations can be performed for selected days as representative of the different year seasons that are already preloaded in the tool. However, the user can also load data from other locations to simulate the models under particular conditions.
Highlights
Water has become a scarce and limited resource due to its growing consumption in developed industrial countries, contamination of water sources and the lack of efficient technologies for retrieving more usable water (Li et al, 2019)
Microalgae wastewater treatment is performed by complex microalgae-bacteria consortia which vary as a function of the environmental and operational conditions (Acién et al, 2016)
The real data obtained from a laboratory stirred-tank reactor, fed with primary domestic wastewater, were compared with the simulated oxygen production by the full microalgaebacteria model given by Eq 8, which considers the effect of the whole environmental and operational conditions
Summary
Water has become a scarce and limited resource due to its growing consumption in developed industrial countries, contamination of water sources and the lack of efficient technologies for retrieving more usable water (Li et al, 2019). In order to solve this situation, some eco-friendly alternatives have appeared for wastewater treatment, which allow obtaining a treated effluent of good quality, an efficient nutrient recovery, and production of energy and/or bioproducts at low cost (Puyol et al, 2017; Patel et al, 2021). From these alternatives, a microalgae-based wastewater treatment process is one of the most promising. The reason for this increased interest is that the use of microalgae has a dual benefit: economic wastewater treatment and microalgae biomass production, that can be subsequently converted into added-value products such as biofertilizers or animal feed (Craggs et al, 2013; .Guzmán et al, 2020; Acién et al, 2017; Li et al, 2019; Suganya et al, 2016)
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