Abstract
Freshwater, a scarce natural source, requires conservation, and considering the rise in environmental pollution, there is a demand for advanced, sustainable, and eco-friendly wastewater reclamation technologies. Effluents coming out from different sources like livestock, food processing, or agricultural runoff contain a significant amount of nutrients, valuable bioactive compounds, and high organic load (i.e., BOD, TDS, and oily compounds). Reclamation of such wastewaters along with nutrient recovery is essential to ensure safe environmental disposal and minimize nutrient loss. Cultivating microalgae in wastewater, one of the newly explored low-cost bioremediation processes, shows high potential in this regard. In microalgal-based wastewater treatment, nutrient uptake (i.e., phosphorus, nitrogen, etc.) not only reduces the load, but also produces different valuable bioactive compounds via microalgal cultivation. However, depending on the nutrient availability, physicochemical characteristics of wastewater, adaptability and robustness of the microalgal strain, designing an optimized low-cost high-efficiency process treatment should be researched further. This chapter highlights the advantages of the microalgal-based wastewater remediation over conventional techniques, in real-time application. The article also focuses on various factors influencing microalgal growth cultivated in wastewater and the valorization of the produced microalgal biomass. Lastly, major challenges and shortcomings in using microalgal wastewater remediation at the industrial level are analyzed, along with the scope for further developments.
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The authors thank the Department of Biotechnology and Medical Engineering of National Institute of Technology Rourkela for providing the necessary research facility. The authors greatly acknowledge the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, for sponsoring the Ph.D. program of the first author.
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Chaudhuri, R., Krishnamoorthy, N., Paramasivan, B. (2023). Role of Microalgae in Integrated Wastewater Remediation and Valorization of Value-Added Compounds. In: Shah, M.P. (eds) Sustainable Industrial Wastewater Treatment and Pollution Control. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2560-5_4
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