Phycoremediation of Industrial Wastewater

The constant increase in the contamination of wastewater from the activities of different industries, constitutes a growing environmental problem, mainly due to the limitations of many treatment plants for such waters that do not allow effective elimination. When contaminants persist in the water resources above their allowed limits it may cause some harmful and toxic effects on aquatic organisms and humans, such as eutrophication, mutagenic, and carcinogenic risks. Bioremediation is a biological process where organisms can naturally treat pollutants from wastewater to release them into the environment in compounds with less or no toxicity. In this way, it is important to promote the use of the nutrients present in industrial wastewater for the development of microalgae cultures, which will allow, on the one hand, to produce biomass of species of interest and, on the other, to remove contaminants, generating an economically profitable process. In this phycoremediation process, the efficiency that can be achieved is fundamentally related to the microalgae species, the bioreactor design, the growth conditions, and the composition of the residual wastewater. In this context, this chapter highlights the main factors to take into account to achieve effectiveness in the process of phycoremediation and production of microalgae. In addition, a case study of our research groups is presented based on the use of the native microalga Scenedesmus obliquus isolated from the Embalse Salto Grande (Entre Ríos, Argentina), which has shown significant effectiveness in the treatment of effluents from the poultry industry.