Abstract
Using filamentous fungi to capture unicellular microalgae is an effective way for microalgae recovery in water treatment. Here, fungi Aspergillus flavus ZJ-1 and microalgae Chlorella vulgaris WZ-1 isolated from a copper tailings pond were used to study the capture effect of ZJ-1 on WZ-1. The highest capture efficiency (97.85%) was obtained within 6h under the optimized conditions of 30°C, 150rpm, fungi-algae biomass ratio of 2.24:1, and initial pH of 9.24 in microalgae medium. The formed fungi-algae pellets (FAPs) were further used to remove Cu(II) from aqueous solution. Results showed that the FAPs formed at different capture times all adsorbed Cu(II) well, and the PAFs formed within 2h (PAFs2h) exhibited the highest Cu(II) adsorption capacity (80.42mg·g-1). SEM images showed that Cu(II) caused a change in the internal structure of PAFs2h from loose to compact, the mycelium shrunk, and the microalgal cells were concave. Cu(II) adsorption by PAFs2h was well conformed to the pseudo-second-order kinetics and the Langmuir isotherm (123.61mg·g-1 of theoretically maximum adsorption capacity). This work opens a way for applying FAPs in the remediation of heavy metal-contaminated wastewater, and the metal adsorption effect was determined by the capture amount of microalgae.
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