Varanasi: Researchers in the IIT-BHU biochemical engineering department claim that they have successfully implemented micro algae and machine learning to treat wastewater.
Under this application, micro-algae in photo-bioreactor can clean up to 90% of wastewater impurities by setting appropriate temperatures, light intensity, carbon dioxide levels, pH levels, which are better than the current bacterial-based water treatment process.
“This research has been published in the ‘Journal of Biochemical Engineering’ based in the Netherlands,” said team leader Dr.
Vishal Mishra, assistant professor in the department.
He said that according to the UN World Water Development Report 2021 ‘Air Assessing’, the use of global bargaining water has increased sixfold in the last 100 years.
Nevertheless, more than 80 percent of wastewater is discharged into the flow of water without treatment.
He said that the conventional water treatment process at this time in place was very expensive.
This includes high electricity costs, mud disposal and a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions.
Given these problems, he said that processing biological waste mediated by micro-algae is a better choice.
“This will not only clean the waste water to 90% but also high-quality compost in the form of micro-algae biomass will prove to be very useful,” he said.
Vishal Singh, a PhD student in the research team with him, told TII that machine learning tools have been successfully implemented to optimize the processing of micro-algae wastewater.
Information obtained from this study can help in experimental design and lead to large-scale wastewater treatment.
Extracted information can be easily used to design micro-algae-based tertiary wastewater treatment plants that can be easily integrated with the current secondary wastewater treatment plant, where treatment is carried out by bacteria.
He further said that micro-algae wastewater treatment plants can even fully replace conventional wastewater treatment plants today.
The treated water produced from the micro algae-based treatment plant meets the criteria set by whom, and can be easily dismissed on the river.
In addition, treated water can be used for irrigation and cleaning purposes, thereby reducing the burden on available natural freshwater resources.
This will benefit the community by solving the problem of lack of drinking water, he added.
Not only this, microbial biomass protein supplements are produced after water treatment can be used for the production of animal feed, fertilizers and biofuels, he said.
“In addition, micro algae spend a large number of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the photosynthesis process and produce oxygen.
Reducing the load of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by micro-algae will solve the problem of global warming for the most part,” he added.