Phosphorus (P), an essential element required for crop growth has no substitute. The global food security depends on phosphorus availability in soil for crop production. World phosphorus reserves are fast depleting and with an annual increase of 2.3% in phosphorus demand, the current reserves will be exhausted in coming 50-100 years. India and other Western countries are forced to import phosph...

This study tested the growth of three algal species (Chlorella sp., Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, and Tetraselmis suecica) using flue gas (generated by natural gas combustion). All the cultures showed poor biomass growth if they were exposed to continuous flue gas. To optimize the flue gas utilization in algal photo-bioreactors, we performed both model simulations and experimental analysis. First...

Open raceway ponds are cost-efficient for mass cultivation of microalgae compared with photobioreactors. Although low-cost options like wastewater as nutrient source is studied to overcome the commercialization threshold for biodiesel production from microalgae, a cost analysis on the use of wastewater and other incremental increases in productivity has not been elucidated. We determined the ef...

Temporal variations in the diatom benthic propagule (DBP) community and its role in the phytoplankton community in a monsoon-affected tropical estuary, Zuari estuary, Goa (India) is presented. The DBP from the sediments was enumerated using an extinction dilution method (Most Probable Number method), which allows estimation of resting stages through examination of germinated vegetative cells in...

Using algae as a feedstock for biodiesel has been considered for a number of years, but it has always had limitations, due mainly to the production methods used to grow and harvest the algae. In this project, we propose a novel attached growth method to produce the algae while recycling dairy farm wastewater using the microalga Chlorella sp. The first part of the work provided a feasibility stu...

The effects of growth phase on the lipid content and surface properties of oleaginous microalgae Botryococcus sp. FACGB-762, Chlorella sp. XJ-445 and Desmodesmus bijugatus XJ-231 were investigated in this study. The results showed that throughout the growth phases, the lipid content of microalgae increased. The surface properties like particle size, the degree of hydrophobicity, and the total c...

The successful cultivation of microalgae in wastewater establishes a waste to profit scenario as it combines treatment stream with production valuable end-products. Here, growth and nutrient removal efficiency three different locally isolated microalgal cultures (Chlorella sp., Scenedesmus mixed consortium) cultivated anaerobically digested municipal centrate (ADMC) abattoir effluent (ADAE) was...

Pyrolysis of residues from the oil extraction process of two types of microalgae, Chlamydomonas (C. sp. JSC4) and Chlorella sorokiniana (C. Sorokiniana CY1) was studied by means of a thermogravimetric analyzer. Five pseudo-components (hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin, lipid and protein) model with n=1 or n#1 was assumed for a kinetic analysis of the collected pyrolysis data. The model with n#1 ...

An iron-poor stream of nearly neutral pH polluted by mine tailings has been investigated for a natural phenomenon responsible for the polishing of heavy metals in mine wastewaters. A white mineralized mat, which was determined to be hydrozincite [Zn(5)(CO(3))(2)(OH)(6)] by X-ray diffraction analysis, was observed in the stream sediments mainly in spring. The precipitate shows a total organic ma...

Capillary electrophoresis single-strand conformational polymorphism (CE-SSCP) was explored as a fast and inexpensive method to differentiate both prokaryotic (blue-green) and eukaryotic (green and brown) algae. A selection of two blue-green algae (Nostoc muscorum and Anabaena inaequalis), five green algae (Chlorella vulgaris, Oedogonium foveolatum, Mougeotia sp., Scenedesmus quadricauda, and Ul...