Green technologies for air pollution treatment by microalgae in tubular photobioreactor

Abstract

Air pollution in general and motorcycle exhaust, in particular, is a big problem attracting a lot of attention from people and researchers worldwide because of the significant impacts it has on humans and the environment. The issue of air pollution is growing, and the impact is more evident than ever. Carbon dioxide represents a series of problems that we face daily but have not yet been effectively solved. Currently, microalgae are known to photosynthesize and use free CO2, bicarbonate ions as a source of nutrients to grow. Microalgae are developed under appropriate environmental conditions, which will bring admirable CO2 treatment efficiency and obtain biomass for other applications. The study approach was an inexpensive and natural air purification solution by microalgae, which is designed as a tubular photobioreactor. The study was conducted by evaluating the ability of Chlorella Vulgaris to grow and absorb CO2 emissions in the newly established system with exhaust gas supplied from a mini motorcycle engine. The results showed that microalgae grew stably in the tubular photobioreactor system with a biomass concentration of 6×106 cells/ml after 42 days of the experiment. Simultaneously with the stable growth of microalgae, the CO2 emission concentration was reduced with 26.59% absorption efficiency after 11 days of the experiment. Finally, establishing the tubular photobioreactor technology system has yielded impressive initial results in cultivating stable growing microalgae combined with CO2 emission treatment.