Logo image
Microalgae cultivation for treating agricultural effluent and producing value-added products
Review   Open access   Peer reviewed

Microalgae cultivation for treating agricultural effluent and producing value-added products

Arsalan Alavianghavanini, Hajar Shayesteh, Parisa A. Bahri, Ashiwin Vadiveloo and Navid Moheimani
Science of the Total Environment, Vol.912, 169369
2024
pdf
Microalgae cultivation for treating agricultural effluent and producing value-added products4.36 MBDownloadView
Published (Version of Record)CC BY V4.0 Open Access

Abstract

Wastewater generated within agricultural sectors such as dairies, piggeries, poultry farms, and cattle meat processing plants is expected to reach 600 million m3 yr−1 globally. Currently, the wastewater produced by these industries are primarily treated by aerobic and anaerobic methods. However, the treated effluent maintains a significant concentration of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. On the other hand, the valorisation of conventional microalgae biomass into bioproducts with high market value still requires expensive processing pathways such as dewatering and extraction. Consequently, cultivating microalgae using agricultural effluents shows the potential as a future technology for producing value-added products and treated water with low nutrient content. This review explores the feasibility of growing microalgae on agricultural effluents and their ability to remove nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus. In addition to evaluating the market size and value of products from wastewater-grown microalgae, we also analysed their biochemical characteristics including protein, carbohydrate, lipid, and pigment content. Furthermore, we assessed the costs of both upstream and downstream processing of biomass to gain a comprehensive understanding of the economic potential of the process. The findings from this study are expected to facilitate further techno-economic and feasibility assessments by providing insights into optimized processing pathways and ultimately leading to the reduction of costs.

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#6 Clean Water and Sanitation
#15 Life on Land
#12 Responsible Consumption & Production

Metrics

22 File views/ downloads
122 Record Views

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Citation topics
3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
3.171 Photoproductivity
3.171.477 Microalgae Biotechnology
Web Of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
ESI research areas
Environment/Ecology
Logo image