3.4. Nutrient removal
To be successful, algal production facilities will probably need
to source their nutrients at least in part from wastewater, which
could also create the benefit of generating wastewater treatment
credits. More than half of the strains examined here in detail removed
>70% of the wastewater nitrogen and phosphate under both
temperature conditions. Strains MA1A3, LB2H5, HA1B3, and PCH16
also showed a high neutral lipid content while removing >94% and
100% of the wastewater nitrate and phosphate. Of course, given the
higher nutrient content, nutrient removal efficiency with the synthetic
BBM medium was in general lower. With BBM medium,
most of the strains removed about 65% of the initial nitrate concentration
but only around 20–30% of the phosphate. Among the high
lipid producing strains, strains MA2H1 (at 10 C) and PCH03 (at
22 C) with final lipid contents of 31% and 39%, showed nitrogen
removal efficiencies of 97%, 93% and phosphate removal efficiencies
of 26%, 22%