Scientists are among the first to investigate using city wastewater as a feedstock for algae-based biofuels. They report that they could easily grow high-value strains of oil-rich algae this way, while removing more than 90 percent of the nitrates and over 50 percent of phosphorus from the wastewater at the same time.
The findings, based on a five-month study at a wastewater treatment facility in Houston, are available online in the journal ALGAE.
“Biofuels were the hot topic in algaculture five years ago, but interest cooled as the algae industry moved toward producing higher-value, lower-volume products for pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, cosmetics, and other products,” says Meenakshi Bhattacharjee, who joined Rice University’s biosciences faculty in June.
