Potentiality of microalgae: advances and challenges in the recovery of nutrients from wastewaters and production of valuable biomass, useful for biotechnological applications

ABDALA DÍAZ, R.T.; REGALDO, L.

Roma

Conferencia; Green Christmas Session 2022. Photosynthetic Microorganisms for Sustainable Development.; 2022

Institute for Biological Systems Research Area Rome1

Urban effluents are commonly referred to as "urban wastewater" (UW) and include domestic wastewater or its mixture with industrial wastewater and/or stormwater runoff. In recent years, the need to contribute to the development of efficient and economically convenient methods for UW treatment has motivated the study of new technologies. In this sense, microalgal applications have increased in the last decade, due to their importance in phycoremediation of urban and livestock effluents and renewable energy industries. Based on this background, the present work focuses on (1) the evaluation of the potential of Chlorella fusca to grow and synthesize metabolites of biotechnological interest, after being exposed for fourteen days to urban wastewater (UW) from Malaga city (UW concentrations:25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%); (2) the study of the capacity of C. fusca to bioremediate UW in photobioreactors at laboratory scale; and (3) the evaluation of the effect of UW on the physiological status of C. fusca, as photosynthetic capacity by using in vivo Chl a fluorescence related to photosystem II and the production of photosynthetic pigments. In the framework of circular economy, we seek to deepen the study to use the biomass of microalgae to obtain metabolites of interest for biofuel production and other biotechnological areas.