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Photobioreactors for Wastewater Treatment

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Application of Microalgae in Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

The application of microalgae for wastewater treatment is attracting increasing attention of researchers because of the added potential of harvesting the generated algal biomass for deriving numerous useful products. The conventional systems, viz., algal ponds, are historically used for both wastewater treatment and biomass production at field scale. However, such systems are dependent on the prevalent environmental conditions and do not provide a sufficient level of control over the process, thus achieving a sub-optimal performance. Photobioreactors provide a better process control and optimization due to their design. However, their large-scale application is constrained by the overall economics, in addition to the increased complexity of the operation. The recent advancement in the technology, however, has addressed many of the associated difficulties in the large-scale photobioreactor application. This chapter provides an overview of the photobioreactor technology, the inherent complexity of their application, and the current technical advances leading to their large-scale application.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Vaishali Ashok

  2. Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Sanjay Kumar Gupta

  3. Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Amritanshu Shriwastav

Authors
  1. Vaishali Ashok
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  2. Sanjay Kumar Gupta
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  3. Amritanshu Shriwastav
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Correspondence to Amritanshu Shriwastav .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Sanjay Kumar Gupta

  2. Institute for Water and Wastewater Technologies, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa

    Faizal Bux

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Ashok, V., Gupta, S.K., Shriwastav, A. (2019). Photobioreactors for Wastewater Treatment. In: Gupta, S.K., Bux, F. (eds) Application of Microalgae in Wastewater Treatment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13913-1_18

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