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Treatment of dairy and swine manure effluents using freshwater algae: fatty acid content and composition of algal biomass at different manure loading rates

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Abstract

An alternative to land spreading of manure effluents is to mass-culture algae on the N and P present in the manure and convert manure N and P into algal biomass. The objective of this study was to determine how the fatty acid (FA) content and composition of algae respond to changes in the type of manure, manure loading rate, and to whether the algae was grown with supplemental carbon dioxide. Algal biomass was harvested weekly from indoor laboratory-scale algal turf scrubber (ATS) units using different loading rates of raw and anaerobically digested dairy manure effluents and raw swine manure effluent. Manure loading rates corresponded to N loading rates of 0.2 to 1.3 g TN m−2 day−1 for raw swine manure effluent and 0.3 to 2.3 g TN m−2 day−1 for dairy manure effluents. In addition, algal biomass was harvested from outdoor pilot-scale ATS units using different loading rates of raw and anaerobically digested dairy manure effluents. Both indoor and outdoor units were dominated by Rhizoclonium sp. FA content values of the algal biomass ranged from 0.6 to 1.5% of dry weight and showed no consistent relationship to loading rate, type of manure, or to whether supplemental carbon dioxide was added to the systems. FA composition was remarkably consistent among samples and >90% of the FA content consisted of 14:0, 16:0, 16:1ω7, 16:1ω9, 18:0, 18:1ω9, 18:2 ω6, and 18:3ω3.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Folasade Ogundipe for her help with algal extractions, Dr. Mary Camp for statistical analyses, and Dr. Dave Luthria for providing guidance on lipid extraction techniques.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. United States Department of Agriculture, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Building 306, Room 109, BARC-East, 10300 Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA

    Walter Mulbry, Shannon Kondrad & Jeffrey Buyer

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  1. Walter Mulbry
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  2. Shannon Kondrad
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  3. Jeffrey Buyer
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Correspondence to Walter Mulbry.

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Mulbry, W., Kondrad, S. & Buyer, J. Treatment of dairy and swine manure effluents using freshwater algae: fatty acid content and composition of algal biomass at different manure loading rates. J Appl Phycol 20, 1079–1085 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-008-9314-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-008-9314-8

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