The current study investigated the potential of one less explored microalgae species, Diplosphaera mucosa VSPA, for treating carpet and textile effluent in a conventionally designed 10 L bubble column photobioreactor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate COD (chemical oxygen demand) removal efficiency by microalgae in carpet effluent. To evaluate D. mucosa VSPA's potential, its growth and bioremediation efficacy were compared to those of a well-known strain, Chlorella pyrenoidosa. D. mucosa VSPA outperformed C. pyrenoidosa in both effluents, with the highest biomass concentration reaching 4.26 and 3.98 g/L in carpet and textile effluent, respectively. D. mucosa VSPA also remediated 94.0% of ammonium nitrogen, 71.6% of phosphate phosphorus, and 91.9% of chemical oxygen demand in carpet effluent, approximately 10% greater than that of C. pyrenoidosa. Both species also removed more than 65% of colour from both effluents, meeting the standard set by governing bodies. Microalgae growth and substrate removal patterns in the photobioreactor were simulated using photobiotreatment and the Gompertz model. Simulation results revealed that photobiotreatment was the better-fit model, concluded based on the coefficient of regression value and the second-order Akaike information criterion test. Modelling studies can assist in increasing the performance and scale-up of the photobioreactor.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-023-03655-3.
Keywords: Biofuel; Biomass; Bioremediation; Kinetics model; Microalgae; N/P ratio; Scale-up.
© King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.