The potential of wastewater grown microalgae for agricultural purposes: Contaminants of emerging concern, heavy metals and pathogens assessment

Abstract

In the coming years, the use of microalgal biomass as agricultural biofertilizers has shown promising results. The use of wastewater as culture medium has resulted in the reduction of production costs, making microalgae-based fertilizers highly attractive for farmers. However, the occurrence of specific pollutants in wastewater, like pathogens, heavy metals and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products may pose a risk on human health. This study presents an holistic assessment of the production and use of microalgal biomass grown in municipal wastewater as biofertilizer in agriculture. Results showed that pathogens and heavy metals concentrations in the microalgal biomass were below the threshold established by the European regulation for fertilizing products, except for cadmium. Regarding CECs, 25 out of 29 compounds were found in wastewater. However, only three of them (hydrocinnamic acid, caffeine, and bisphenol A) were found in the microalgae biomass used as biofertilizer. Agronomic tests were performed for lettuce growth in greenhouse. Four treatments were studied, comparing the use of microalgae biofertilizer with a conventional mineral fertilizer, and also a combination of both of them. Results suggested that microalgae can help reducing the mineral nitrogen dose, since similar fresh shoot weights were obtained in the plants grown with the different assessed fertilizers. Lettuce samples revealed the presence of cadmium and CECs in all the treatments including both negative and positive controls, which suggests that their presence was not linked to the microalgae biomass. On the whole, this study revealed that wastewater grown microalgae can be used for agricultural purposes reducing mineral N need and guaranteeing health safety of the crops.