Growth of benthic freshwater algae on dairy manures

Abstract

A potential alternative to land application of livestock manures for cropproduction is the production of algae to recover the nitrogen andphosphorus present in the manure. Compared to terrestrial plants,filamentous algae have exceedingly high growth and nutrient uptake rates. Moreover, they are capable of year-round growth in temperate climates,can be harvested on adapted farm-scale equipment, and yield a biomassthat should be valuable as an animal feed supplement. The objective of thisresearch was to evaluate algal turf scrubber (ATS) technology to removenitrogen, phosphorus and chemical oxygen demand from raw andanaerobically digested dairy manure. Laboratory-scale ATS units wereoperated by continuously recycling wastewater and adding manure effluentsdaily. ATS units were seeded with algal consortia from a nearby streamand grown using dairy manures from two different dairy farms. Algalbiomass was harvested weekly and dried prior to analysis for total Kjeldahlnitrogen, total phosphorus, and inorganic constituents. Wastewater sampleswere analyzed for total Kjeldahl nitrogen, ammonium, nitrate,orthophosphate, conductivity and chemical oxygen demand. Using atypical manure input containing 0.6–0.96 g total nitrogen day-1,the dried algal yield was approximately 5 g m-2 day-1. Thedried algae contained approximately 1.5–2% phosphorus and 5–7%nitrogen. Algal nitrogen and phosphorus accounted for 42–100% ofinput ammonium-nitrogen (33–42% of total nitrogen) and 58–100%of input total phosphorus, respectively.