The final touch: algae culture on urine and RO concentrate for pigment production
ThemeEnergy & Nutrient Factory, Innovation / new techniques
Summary
Ammonium will be recovered from the Reverse Osmosis (RO) concentrate thrugh the algae culture that will use it for its growth. Moreover, the possibility will be tested to use source separated urine as substrate for the algae culture. The aim of this research is to study the growth of the microalgae G. sulphuraria on urine and RO concentrate and thereby recover nutrients. The recovered product is the blue pigment phycocyanin. Phycocyanin is used as fluorescent dye, food additive and colorant, and cosmetics.
Starter cultures of G. sulphuraria will be grown. Screening experiments will give the information of the required nutrient composition for G. sulphuraria. Afterwards, scaled up experiments will create more biomass to quantify the ammonium- and phosphate uptake by the microalgae. Finally, the pigments will be extracted and their purity will be determined.
Start of Research
February 2019
End of Research
December 2020
Researcher(s)
- Dhavissen Narayen Intern TU Delft
- Paula van den Brink Project leader NEREUS, Evides Industriewater
- Otto Schepers Process Engineer Evides Industriewater
- Evides Industriewater
Linkshttps://www.evidesindustriewater.nl/nereus
https://www.nereus-project.eu/about
Paula van den Brink
[email protected]