Solids Retention Time Dependent Phototrophic Growth and Population Changes in Chemostat Cultivation Using Wastewater

There has been renewed interest in using algae for wastewater polishing and treatment in recent years. Because solids retention time (SRT) is a key design and operating parameter in bioreactor operation, this research determined the effect of SRT on phototrophic growth and microbial population dynamics in continuous-flow chemostat systems. There was a unique feature of phototrophic growth that differed from chemotrophic growth in chemostat. It was found that the phototrophic biomass concentration increased proportionally as SRT increased from 3 to 9 days. Regardless of the change in SRT, a step function model was successfully applied with the predicted phototrophic production rate of 4.5 ± 0.9 g/m²d at the light intensity of 68.5 µmol/m²·s. Even though the continuous-flow systems were initially seeded with a 1:1 mixture of green algae and cyanobacteria, Chlorella vulgaris always dominated (98%) in the continuous-flow chemostat systems under steady-state conditions.