Diseño y construcción de un FOTOBIORREACTOR AIR-LIFT para la remoción de nutrientes en aguas residuales urbanas con la microalga Chlorella vulgaris.

Abstract

The environmental impact generated in natural water ecosystems by the dumping of sewage, from different sectors, such as: agricultural, industrial, livestock and domestic. One of the environmental impacts due to this shedding is eutrophication; It is the excessive algae growth due to the presence of high concentrations of salts. Therefore, in this research it was proposed to evaluate two strains of the microalga Chlorella vulgaris (native and UTEX1803) and two concentrations of each (20- 30%), for the removal of nutrients using sewage from the municipality of Pamplona, North of Santander; to do this, physico-chemical evaluation was conducted to a point of dumping residual water from the municipality of Pamplona, and likewise, the inoculum strains were made in order to adapt them to the new substrate. On the other hand, was designed and built a system of efficient cultivation which allowed optimization of treatment, this system consisted of a photobioreactor air-lift of concentric tubes; hydrodynamic characterized the flow of air operation, having as a result a volumetric coefficient of mass of O2 transfer kLa 67, 68 h-1, mixing time 5,303 ± 0,0153 s and, finally, the retention of gas in the reactor ε was 0,0219. Commissioning of the bioreactor was determined its efficiency, through the increase of cell growth, compared with the preliminary tests, also in the removal of nutrients. In the treatments with inocula of 30% was determined a removal of 95% of NO3 and PO4 83.3% for the native strain and strain UTEX 1803 the 92.5 and 91.2% NO3 and PO4 respectively.