Abstract
Cultivation of microalgae has been suggested as a green approach for a sustainable wastewater treatment especially heavy metal bioremediation. This study investigated the bio-removal of zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), cadmium (Cd) and manganese (Mn) from domestic wastewater (DW) and food processing wastewater (FW) using green microalgae, Botryococcus sp.. The total of five treatments represented by five different cell concentrations (1×10 3 , 1×10 4 , 1×10 5 , 1×10 6 and 1×10 7 cells/mL) of Botryococcus sp. in the wastewaters medium. The results revealed high removal efficiency of Zn, Fe, Cd and Mn after 18 days of the culture compared to control (wastewaters without algae). In DW , Zn, Fe, Cd and Mn were successfully removed at the highest efficiencies up to 71.5%, 51.2%, 83.5% and 97.2%, respectively while in FW, the same metal concentrations were reduced by up to 64.4%, 53.3%, 52.9% and 26.7%, respectively. Overall, most of the algae cell concentrations tested were successfully reducing the metals contaminant presence in both wastewaters and provides a baseline for further phycoremediation coupled with biomass production.
Highlights
Rapid population growth and industrial development are expected to contribute extremely to the generation of waste, especially wastewater
The domestic wastewater (DW) was obtained from wastewater treatment plant located in the main campus of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor (N 01° 51' 55.224" E 103° 5' 21.183")
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of microalgae; Botryococcus sp. cell concentration on the bio-removal of heavy metal from domestic wastewater and food processing wastewater under indoor culture condition
Summary
Rapid population growth and industrial development are expected to contribute extremely to the generation of waste, especially wastewater. The booming food industry in Malaysia is becoming one of the leading contributors of wastewater that pollutes the receiving water bodies [1]. Both domestic and food industry wastewaters contained a high amount of organic and inorganic nutrients which are suitable for growth of microalgae [2]. The growing microalgae can be used to carry out the phycoremediation process [1, 2]. These wastewaters contained nutrients and harmful heavy metals that threaten the aquatic life and public health
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