Pig Slaughterhouse Wastewater: Medium Culture for Microalgae Biomass Generation as Raw Material in Biofuel Industries

Resumen

Microalgae are photosynthetic microorganisms with high lipid content, capable of degrading nutrients from wastewater. In this research, two strains of microalgae, Scenedesmus sp. and Chlorella vulgaris were cultivated in sterilized pig slaughterhouse wastewater using outdoor flat photobioreactors. Cell growth, total lipids, free fatty acids (FFA), fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and physicochemical parameters of wastewater were measured. The results indicated that pig slaughterhouse wastewater is adequate to grow these species of microalgae, obtaining a higher biomass growth for Scenedesmus sp. compared to Chlorella vulgaris (0.41 g/L vs. 0.2 g/L); additionally, these species can be used in bioremediation processes due to the nutrient removal achieved in terms of Total Nitrogen (TN), Total Phosphorous (TP) and Total Organic Carbon (TOC). Methylcyclohexane, chloroform: methanol (1:2) and ethyl acetate had better yield of lipids and FFA. The percentages of FAMEs from FFA were in the range of 52.5–89.5 wt% for Scenedesmus sp. and for Chlorella vulgaris from 52–80.5 wt%. Although the values of lipids, FFA and FAME are below of the range reported by other authors, the use of this type of wastewater as culture medium for the two species cannot be ruled out for lipid extraction in biofuel production.

Descripción

The authors would like to thank the Department of Research and Innovation (DRI) of SEK International University in Ecuador for financing reagents and materials for this research in the project P101617_2.2; other materials and equipment were donated by the Corporation for Energy Research of Ecuador and some analyses were developed by the labs of Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain (Comunidad de Madrid project ALGATEC P2018/BAA-4532).

Citación

Medrano-Barboza, J., Herrera-Rengifo, K., Aguirre-Bravo, A., Ramírez-Iglesias, J. R., Rodríguez, R., & Morales, V. (2022). Pig Slaughterhouse Wastewater: Medium Culture for Microalgae Biomass Generation as Raw Material in Biofuel Industries. Water, 14(19), 3016. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14193016
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