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Technical potential of microalgal bacterial floc raceway ponds treating food-industry effluents while producing microalgal bacterial biomass: An outdoor pilot-scale study

Abstract:

To replace costly mechanical aeration by photosynthetical aeration, upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) effluent of food-industry was treated in an outdoor MaB-floc raceway pond. Photosynthetic aeration was sufficient for nitrification, but the raceway effluent quality was below current discharge limits, despite the high hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 35 days. Hereafter, conventional activated sludge (CAS) effluent of food-industry was treated in this pond to recover phosphorus. The two-day HRT results in a more realistic pond area, but the phosphorus removal efficiency was low (20%). High biomass productivities were obtained, i.e. 31.3 and 24.9 ton total suspended solids hapond−1 year−1 for UASB and CAS effluent, respectively. Bioflocculation enabled successful harvesting of CAS effluent-fed MaB-flocs by settling and filtering at 150–250 μm to 22.7% total solids. To conclude, MaB-floc raceway ponds cannot be recommended as the sole treatment for these food-industry effluents, but huge potential lies in added-value biomass production.