Sewage treatment
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The Water challenge in Europe
The water is a limited resource and is essential for life.
Promoting the sustainable management of water resources it is important to protect and conserve these resources in an effective way.
Microalgae for wastewater treatment
One of the key aspects of our technology is the reduction of energy consumption. In the treatment of waste water, about 60-70% of the consumption of energy is produced by the need to provide oxygen for the growth of aerobic bacteria in the biological reactor. With our technology of debugging are the microalgae which provide the oxygen, so that starting, we already have a large energy savings.
The biological reactors allow for the growth of microalgae, that take advantage of the energy from the sun to perform secondary treatment and also tertiary.
To perform photosynthesis, microalgae assimilate CO2 and dissolved nutrients in the water and give off oxygen, allowing the concentration of oxygen is high, and to promote the growth of aerobic bacteria. They form therefore a consortium bacteria and algae are metabolized in the liver most of the nutrients in the wastewater, highlighting a nitrogen and phosphorus removal of over 85% in most cases.
Due to the oxygen is produced by the microalgae does not require external supply of oxygen, so the energy costs and maintenance are greatly reduced.
In addition, the high concentration of oxygen makes this process does not detach bad odors.
In these systems occurs a effluent quality for use in irrigation and a biomass with a remarkable value.
Problems in water purification traditional
In almost all sewage treatment plants, traditional, after the pretreatment and primary treatment would the treatment secondary, for which are used bioreactors with aerobic bacteria, it is necessary to use compressors to inject the oxygen in need of these bacteria, which leads to a large consumption of energy.
In these reactors due to the bacterial activity is apparent a lot of CO2 and other Greenhouse Gases.
In addition, the effluent still carries dissolved a high concentration of nutrients (N and P), which produce the well-known effects of eutrophication in natural waters.
Finally, the process generates waste in the form of a slurry containing a mixture of organic matter, microorganisms, suspended solids and other contaminants whose management poses challenges to environmental and operational.
Example of treatment of wastewater
Photobioreactor 100m2
3500 m3 / year
A reactor of 100m2 (50m x 2m) has the capacity to manage 3500m3 of wastewater per year, the equivalent to a population of about 120 people.
You are going to be able to reuse the 90% of this water for the work of irrigation or cleaning.
Likewise, you are going to get between 600 and 1000kg biomass highly revalorizable.
Cost of treatment
Plant experimental CENTER (Centro Experimental New Technologies in the Water)
For the treatment of wastewater.
- Population equiv.: 250 habitants
- Flow treaty: 20-40 m3 / day
- Tank Imhoff: 12.4 m3
- Superf. bioreactor: 380 m2
- Depth: 0.3 m
- Reduction DBO: 85-90%
- Removal total N: 85-95%
- Removal P total: 85-95%
Applications of the biomass of algal
The biomass of algal obtained after the water treatment with microalgae has valuable applications.