A Microalgae-Methanotroph Coculture is a Promising Platform for Fuels and Chemical Production From Wastewater

Roberts, Nathan; Hilliard, Matthew; He, Q. Peter; Wang, Jin

doi:10.3389/fenrg.2020.563352

Title: A Microalgae-Methanotroph Coculture is a Promising Platform for Fuels and Chemical Production From Wastewater

Journal Article · Tue Sep 08 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Frontiers in Energy Research

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2020.563352· OSTI ID:1658656

Roberts, Nathan; Hilliard, Matthew; He, Q. Peter; Wang, Jin

Wastewater resource recovery facilities are major energy consumers in a community, as well as major contributors for greenhouse gas emission. Although anaerobic digestion is widely employed in wastewater treatment to reduce the amount of solid organic waste and the sludge produced, the use of the produced biogas is mostly limited to heating and electricity generation, while the nutrient rich digestate still requires further treatment. In this work, we propose a waste-to-value platform based on a microalgae-methanotroph coculture, which can convert anaerobic digestion-generated biogas into value-added products, while simultaneously removing nutrients from digestate. The platform takes advantage of the synergistic interactions within a microalgae-methanotroph coculture to achieve significantly improved productivity of microbial biomass and enhanced nutrient recovery performance. Using Chlorella sorokiniana–Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) as the model coculture, we demonstrate that the coculture offers a highly promising platform for waste-to-value technologies, which can efficiently recover energy (from CH₄) and carbon (from both CH₄ and CO₂) to produce microbial biomass, while removing nutrients from wastewater to produce treated clean water. Compared to microalgae monoculture, the coculture achieved 120% improvement in biomass production, 71 and 164% improvement in total nitrogen and total phosphorous removal, respectively, when the same amount of biogas was provided.

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Research Organization:: Auburn Univ., AL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); US Dept. of Education

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0019181; P200A150074; P200A180002

OSTI ID:: 1658656

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1714347; OSTI ID: 1856352

Journal Information:: Frontiers in Energy Research, Journal Name: Frontiers in Energy Research Vol. 8; ISSN 2296-598X

Publisher:: Frontiers Research FoundationCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: Switzerland

Language:: English

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37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
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Title: A Microalgae-Methanotroph Coculture is a Promising Platform for Fuels and Chemical Production From Wastewater

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