Photogranules assembly and exploration for wastewater treatment with resource recovery

Photogranules are dense, highly diverse spherical agglomerates of phototrophic (cyanobacteria, eukaryotic green algae), and non-phototrophic (prokaryotic bacteria) microorganisms, and these can cultivated in engineered ecosystems (photobioreactors).

In this work we explore the syntrophic relation between phototrophs and chemotrophs for microalgae-based wastewater treatment. The three major advantages of photgranular technology are: 1) in-situ simultaneous oxygen (photosynthesis) and carbon dioxide (respiration) production and consumption resulting in little to no aeration needed; 2) very high settleability of the photogranules resulting in easy microalgal biomass harvesting; 3) Two to three times higher biomass generation and therefore nutrients recovery that suspended microalgae biomass or granular bacterial biomass.