• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.242-257
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• 2022

Microalgae is becoming a vital component for a circular economy and ultimately for sustainable development. Herein, recent developments in different outcomes of microalgae for wastewater treatment and biorefinery were reviewed. From its primary function as a third-generation resource of biofuel, the usage of microalgae has been diversified as an integral element for the CO₂ sequestration and production of economically valuable products (e.g., pharmaceuticals, animal feeds, biofertilizer, biochar, etc.). Principles and recent challenges for each microalgae application were presented to suggest a motivation for future research and the direction of development. The integration of microalgae within the concept of the circular economy was also discussed with various routes of microalgae-based biorefinery.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2016

The co-culture system of microalgae and bacteria enables simultaneous removal of BOD and nutrients in a single reactor if the pair of microorganisms is symbiotic. In this case, nutrients are converted to biomass constituents of microalgae. This review highlights the importance and recent researches using symbiotic co-culture system of microalgae and bacteria in wastewater treatment, focusing on the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus. During wastewater treatment, the microalgae produces molecular oxygen through photosynthesis, which can be used as an electron acceptor by aerobic bacteria to degrade organic pollutants. The released $CO_2$ during the bacterial mineralization can then be consumed by microalgae as a carbon source in photosynthesis. Microalgae and bacteria in the co-culture system could cooperate or compete each other for resources. In the context of wastewater treatment, positive relationships are prerequisite to accomplish the sustainable removal of nutrients. Therefore, the selection of compatible species is very important if the co-culture has to be utilized in wastewater treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.109-117
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• 2024

In this study, various pre-treatment methods were evaluated for microalgae separation. These methods aimed to facilitate safe, rapid, and cost-effective online imaging for real-time observation and cell counting. As pre-treatment techniques, heating, chemical hydrolysis, heating combined with chemical hydrolysis, and sonication were employed. The effectiveness of these methods was evaluated in the context of online imaging quality through experimentation on cultivated microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus quadricauda). The chemical treatment method was found to be inappropriate for improving image acquisition. The heating pre-treatment method exhibited a drawback of prolonged cell dispersion time. Additionally, the heating combined with chemical hydrolysis method was confirmed to have the lowest dispersion effect for Chlorella vulgaris. Conversely, ultrasonication emerged as a promising technique for microalgae separation in terms of repeatability and reproducibility. This study suggests the potential for selecting optimal pre-treatment methods to effectively operate real-time online monitoring devices, paving the way for future research and applications in microalgae cultivation and imaging.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.18-23
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• 2016

Cell walls of microalgae consist of a polysaccharide and glycoprotein matrix providing the cells with a formidable defense against its environment. Anaerobic digestion (AD) of microalgae is primarily inhibited by the chemical composition of their cell walls containing biopolymers able to resist bacterial degradation. Adoption of pre-treatments such as thermal, thermal hydrolysis, ultrasound and enzymatic hydrolysis have the potential to remove these inhibitory compounds and enhance biogas yields by degrading the cell wall, and releasing the intracellular algogenic organic matter (AOM). This paper preproposal stage investigated the effect of different pre-treatments on microalgae cell wall, and their impact on the quantity of soluble biomass released in the media and thus on the digestion process yields. This Paper present optimum approach to degradation of the cell wall by ultra-sonication with practical design specification parameter for ultrasound based pretreatment system. As a result of this paper presents, a microalgae system in a wastewater treatment flowsheet for residual nutrient uptake can be justified by processing the waste biomass for energy recovery. As a conclusion on this result, Low energy harvesting technologies and pre-treatment of the algal biomass are required to improve the overall energy balance of this integrated system.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.373-383
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• 2018

Fouling by solids and microorganisms is the major obstacle limiting the efficient use of membrane wastewater treatment. In our previous study, two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system was proposed to treat anaerobic digested palm oil mill effluent (AnPOME). This two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system had showed great potential for the treatment of AnPOME with high removal of COD, $NH_3-N$, $PO_4{^{3-}}$, TSS, turbidity, and colour. However, fouling behavior of the membrane in this two stages microalgae/membrane filtration system was still unknown. In this study, empirical models that describe permeate flux decline for dead-end filtration (pore blocking - complete, intermediate, and standard; and cake layer formation) presented by Hermia were used to fit the experimental results in identifying the fouling mechanism under different experimental conditions. Both centrifuged and non-centrifuged samples were taken from the medium with 3 days RT intervals, from day 0 to day 12 to study their influence on fouling mechanisms described by Hermia for ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF), and reverse osmosis (RO) filtration mode. Besides, a more detailed study on the use of resistance-in-series model for deadend filtration was done to investigate the fouling mechanisms involved in membrane filtration of AnPOME collected after microalgae treatment. The results showed that fouling of UF and NF membrane was mainly caused by cake layer formation and it was also supported by the analysis for resistance-in-series model. Whereas, fouling of RO membrane was dominated by concentration polarization.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.647-652
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to investigate the heavy metal removal and biomass productivity in the Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) using eggshell and microalgae. The experiment was operated 6 days in the eggshell and microalgae hybrid system, and using eggshell powder and microalgae as Chlorella vulgaris. The obtained result indicated that the biomass productivity of 2.82 g/L/d from 1.12 g/L initial concentration in 6 days was reached with light transmittance of 97% at a 305 mm depth in the optical panel photobioreactor (OPPBR). The total removal efficiency of Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn and Cd was found to be 98.92%, 99.91%, 98.78%, 88.99% and 98.00% in the AMD using eggshell and Chlorella vulgaris hybrid system, respectively. Additionally, there were significant relationships between biomass and concentration of each heavy metal ($R^2$ = 0.8771, 0.8643, 0.8669, 0.9134 and 0.6277 for Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn and Cd). These results indicated that the eggshell and microalgae hybrid system was highly effective for heavy metal removal when compared to the conventional biological process in the AMD. Therefore, the eggshell and microalgae hybrid system was effective for heavy metal removal and biomass productivity and can be applied to treat AMD in treatment plant.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.293-308
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• 2015

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) was produced in huge amounts in Malaysia, and if it discharged into the environment, it causes a serious problem regarding its high content of nutrients and high levels of COD and BOD concentrations. This study was devoted on POME treatment and purification using an integrated process consisting of microalgae treatment followed by membrane filtration. The main objective was to find the optimum conditions as retention time and pH in the biological treatment of POME. Since after the optimum conditions there is a diverse effect of time and the process become costly. According to our knowledge, there is no existing study optimized the retention time and percentage removal of nutrients for microalgae treatment of POME wastewater. In order to achieve with optimization, a second order polynomial model regression coefficients and goodness of fit results in removal percentages of ammonia nitrogen ($NH_3-N$), orthophosphorous ($PO_4{^{-3}}$), COD, TSS, and turbidity were estimated. WinQSB technique was used to optimize the objective function of the developed model, and the optimum conditions were found. Also, ultrafiltration membrane is useful for purification of POME samples as verified by experiments.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.307-312
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• 2011

The potential of algal-bacterial culture was investigated for advanced treatment of animal wastewater. Fed-batch experiments were carried out to examine treatability of nitrogen and phosphorus in different microbial consortium: Chlorella vulgaris, activated sludge, three microalgae strains (Scenedesmus, Microcystis, Chlorella) and Bacillus consortium, and three microalgae strains and sludge consortium. Single culture of C. vugaris showed the better efficiency for nitrogen removal but was not good at organic matter and phosphorus removal compared with activated sludge. Three microalgae and Bacillus consortium was best culture among the culture and consortium for pollutants removal tested in this experiment. Effect of $CO_2$ addition was studied by using three microalgae and Bacillus consortium. $CO_2$ addition enhanced T-P removal efficiency up to 60%. However, removal efficiencies of T-N and ammonia nitrogen reduced on the contrary.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.862-868
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• 2022

Microalgae are photosynthetic cyanobacteria and eukaryotic microorganisms, mainly living in the water. In agriculture, numerous studies have been conducted to utilize microalgae as a biostimulant resource. Scenedesmus has been known to be one such microalga that can promote plant growth by secretion of auxin or cytokinin hormone analogs. However, no research has been performed on the effect of microalgae treatment on plant microbiota communities. This study was conducted to investigate the mode of action of microalgae as biostimulants in a plant microbiota perspective by using Scenedesmus sp. CHK0059 (also known as species Chlorella fusca), which has been well documented as a biostimulant for strawberries. The strawberry cultivar Keumsil was bred with Seolhyang and Maehyang as the parent cultivars. Using these three cultivars, microbiota communities were evaluated for changes in structural composition according to the CHK0059 treatment. CHK0059-treated Seolhyang, and CHK0059-untreated Maehyang were similar in microbial diversity in the endosphere. From a microbiota community perspective, the diversity change showed that CHK0059 was affected by the characteristics of the host. Conversely, when CHK0059 treatment was applied, populations of Streptomyces and Actinospica were observed in the crown endosphere.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.703-709
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• 2013

Among many microalgae cultivation types, heterotrophic culture with low cost carbon sources and energy saving culture method is crucial. A result of estimating the effects of pH on wastewater treatment using heterotrophic growing microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana shows that there was no difference in microalgae growth amount and nitrogen, phosphorus removal rate by wide range of pH(5 ~ 9). From pH 5 to 9, total nitrogen, phosphorous and glucose removal rates were 10.5 mg-N/L/d, 2 mg-P/L/d, 800 ~ 1000 mg/L respectively. This study reveals that C. sorokiniana cannot metabolite glycerol heterotrophically, however, glucose and acetate were proper carbon sources for growth and T-N, T-P and TOC removal. This research highlights the potential of heterotrophic microalgal growth with wastewater treatment plant with wide range of pH and carbon sources.