article · Sustainability
Combining microalgae cultivation with decantation and filtration provides an effective method for treating domestic wastewater. Testing this integrated process demonstrated substantial reductions in key wastewater pollutants. For the filtered effluent, removal efficiencies reached 86.34 percent for chemical oxygen demand, 100 percent for ammonia, and 91.12 percent for phosphate. The microalgae species Chlorella vulgaris notably improved dissolved oxygen levels and independently achieved up to an 80 percent reduction in chemical oxygen demand. Throughout the cultivation period, phosphate concentrations fell significantly, alongside an observed decrease in solids within the system. The integrated filtration approach relies on biosorption using biomass. Overall, the microalgal system delivers an ecologically safe and less expensive alternative for nutrient removal that removes the requirement for conventional tertiary wastewater treatment stages.
Domestic wastewater must be cleaned before release to prevent environmental pollution and protect public health. Conventional tertiary treatment methods can be costly and resource-intensive. Using microalgae such as Chlorella vulgaris alongside simple filtration offers a lower-cost, ecologically safe alternative that effectively strips harmful nutrients and organic waste from water, helping communities manage domestic wastewater more sustainably.
This approach offers an application in domestic and municipal wastewater treatment, where sanitation operators seek lower-cost nutrient and organic waste removal. By eliminating the need for standard tertiary treatment through microalgae and biomass filtration, it could reduce facility operational expenditure. Based on the abstract, the method appears to be at an applied and tested laboratory stage, requiring further engineering and pilot-scale trials before commercial or municipal adoption.
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Phycoremediation of wastewater with microalgae is a viable option and is considered a process for cleaning up toxic waste using microalgae or macroalgae. Most water is modified by its use and must be treated before discharge. Given this situation, and following the example of other researchers around the world, our study focuses on the filtration method and combines it with the microalgae method to treat domestic wastewater. The aim of our work is to study the effects of using the microalgae system in combination with the decontamination and filtration system to reduce the nutrient content of domestic wastewater. The coupling of the two methods produced very significant results. However, the removal efficiencies for the filtered effluent increased to 86.34%, 100%, and 91.12% for COD, ammonia, and phosphate, respectively. The algae treatment offers an ecologically safe and less expensive system for nutrient removal and eliminates the need for tertiary treatment, which refers to the filtered treatment effluent, allowing us to conclude that the Chlorella vulgaris species has a very interesting influence on dissolved oxygen and that it had a very remarkable effect on COD, with a maximum reduction that reached 80%. The results obtained show that the phosphate content of the treated wastewater was significantly reduced during the cultivation period. In time, a decrease in solids was observed within the microalgae treatment system, influenced by the use of two different types of microalgae and the incorporation of the filtration system, which is based on the use of biosorption of methylene blue by biomass. The parameters analyzed in this study are hydrogen potential (pH), ammonia (NH3), phosphate ion (PO43−), chemical oxygen demand (COD), electrical conductivity (EC), total solids (TS), total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), nitrates, and dissolved oxygen (DO).
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DOI: 10.3390/su152216110
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