Batch kinetics of nitrogen and phosphorus removal from synthetic wastewater by algae [An article from: Ecological Engineering]

This digital document is a journal article from Ecological Engineering, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Batch experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of the initial nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations on nutrient removal performance of microalgae Chlorella vulgaris and to determine biokinetic coefficients such as k; reaction rate constant, K"m, half saturation constant, and Y, yield coefficient by using Michaelis-Menten rate expression. The NH"4-N concentration was varied between 13.2-410mgl^-^1 while PO"4-P concentration was between 7.7-199mgl^-^1 by keeping N/P ratio around 2/1 in the synthetic wastewater. The experiments were performed at pH 7.0 and at room temperature (20+/-2^oC) with artificial illumination (4100lux). Experimental results indicated that effluent water quality decreases with increasing nutrient concentrations and algae culture can remove nitrogen more effectively compared to phosphorus. Biokinetic coefficients were determined as k=1.5mg NH"4-N mg^-^1 chl a d^-^1, K"m=31.5mgl^-^1, Y"N=0.15mg chl a mg^-^1 NH"4-N for nitrogen and k=0.5mg PO"4-P mg^-^1 chl a d^-^1, K"m=10.5mgl^-^1, Y"P=0.14mg chl a mg^-^1 PO"4-P for phosphorus.