Page 184 - Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

Biorefinery of microalgae biomass cultivated in wastewaters 157

The cultivation of microalgae in wastewaters offers an efficient way to treat liq-
uid wastes. These microorganisms can uptake many toxic substances and make use
of the nutrients available in the wastewaters to produce a useful biomass. Over the
years, several kinds of wastes have been evaluated to cultivate algal biomass to pro-
duce biofuels and valuable coproducts (Table 7.1).
Among them, it is of particular importance to focus on the municipal and indus-
trial waste effluents as they account for 43% of the total wastewater produced
worldwide (Koncagul et al., 2017).
Both algae and consortia of algae and bacteria cultures have been proven to offer
interesting results for the tertiary treatment of these wastewaters (Goncalves et al.,
2016; Mahapatra et al., 2014; Maza-Marquez et al., 2017; Rashid et al., 2018; Zhao
et al., 2014).
LLs and digestate slurries normally contain high loads ammonia that needs to be
reduced before disposal. The understanding of the conditions driving the most effi-
cient use of these wastes as a culture medium to sustain algae growth is highly
important.

Table 7.1 Types of liquid wastes used as source of nutrients to cultivate algae.
Origin of liquid waste References

Dairy farms Badvipour et al. (2016), Fica and Sims (2016),
Gentili (2014), Hena et al. (2015), and
Ummalyma and Sukumaran (2014)
Agricultural activities Calixto et al. (2016), Ganeshkumar et al. (2018),
Herna ´ndez et al. (2013), Hulsen et al. (2018),
Mousavi et al. (2018), and Zhu et al. (2013)
Metal industry Ji et al. (2014b)
Oil mills Halim et al. (2016), Maza-Marquez et al. (2017),
and Resdi et al. (2016)
Pulp and paper industry Blank et al. (2016), Gentili (2014), and Kouhia
et al. (2015)
Sugar mills Calixto et al. (2016), Lohrey and Kochergin (2012),
and Ren et al. (2018)
Ethanol plants Assemany et al. (2018), Ganeshkumar et al. (2018),
and Solovchenko et al. (2014)
Landfills (leachates) Paskuliakova et al. (2018), Pereira et al. (2016),
Sniffen et al. (2018), and Zhao et al. (2014)
Anaerobic digestion processes Ji et al. (2014a), Koutra et al. (2018), Meixner et al.
(digestates) (2016), Morales-Amaral et al. (2015), and Tan
et al. (2016)
Municipal wastes Arora et al. (2016), Caporgno et al. (2015), Dong
et al. (2014), and El Shimi and Moustafa (2018)
Treatment plants (centrate, AlMomani and Ormeci (2016), Gao et al. (2016),
primary, and secondary Ge and Champagne (2016), and Jebali et al.
effluents) (2018)