Sustainable resource management is a pressing issue. The stability of climate, ozone layer, water balance, and nutrient cycles have been upset and pose ongoing challenges to meeting the demands of a growing world population, including greater demand for food and low-cost animal feed. There is increasing awareness of the advantages of resource recovery from wastes, including nutrient recovery from wastewater. The necessity of nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) removal becomes attractive when nutrients are recognized as valuable resources, and are extracted through novel processing schemes. Microorganisms that produce valuable single-cell protein (SCP) may be able to simultaneously capture carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and recover nitrogen from wastewaters. Culturing SCP, specifically microalgae and bacteria grown on wastewater, is a means of resource recovery to meet livestock feed demands in an economical, scalable, and sustainable manner. The efficiency of microbial protein production should outcompete that of plant protein for livestock feed, with decreased water, environmental, and land footprints. <i>Desmodesmus</i> and <i>Scenedesmus spp</i>. are genera of green algae, of the family Scenedesmaceae. This microalga family has demonstrated a tolerance for a range of pH, temperature, and nutrient variations. The adaptability of these microalgae makes them excellent candidates to use on wastewaters, which may expose SCP microbes to variable nutrient composition and contaminants, as substrates. Achieving resource recovery from wastewater through production of SCP from waste heat, waste carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus shows promise. However, designing an economical, scalable, and sustainable process with a selected microbial inoculant or consortia is difficult. In this research, we show early results on growing nutritious microalgae for low-cost animal feed.

Resource recovery from wastewater as single-cell protein

255th National Meeting (2018)

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