Bioconversion of Organic Pollutants in Fish-Canning Wastewater into Volatile Fatty Acids and Polyhydroxyalkanoate

Tania Palmeiro-Sánchez, José Luis Campos and Anuska Mosquera-Corral
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Tania Palmeiro-Sánchez: Microbiology, Ryan Institute, School of Natural Sciences, National University of Ireland Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland
José Luis Campos: Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Avda. Padre Hurtado 750, Viña del Mar 2520000, Chile
Anuska Mosquera-Corral: CRETUS, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 19, 1-16

Abstract: The wastewater from the cookers of a tuna-canning plant was used as feedstock for the process. It was acidified in a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) of 1.5 L to produce a mixture of volatile fatty acids (VFAs). The effluent contained 28.3 ± 8.7 g COD S /L and 25.0 ± 4.6 g COD VFA /L, 4.4 ± 1.6 g NH 4 + /L, and 10.9 ± 4.0 g Na + /L, which corresponds to about 28 g NaCl/L approximately. This was used to feed a PHA production system. The enriched MMC presented a capacity to accumulate PHAs from the fermented tuna wastewater. The maximum PHA content of the biomass in the fed-batch (8.35 wt% PHA) seemed very low, possibly due to the variable salinity (from 2.2 up to 12.3 g NaCl/L) and the presence of ammonium (which promoted the biomass growth). The batch assay showed a PHA accumulation of 5.70 wt% PHA, but this is a much better result if the productivity of the reactor is taken into account. The fed-batch reactor had a productivity of 10.3 mg PHA/(L h), while the batch value was about five times higher (55.4 mg PHA/(L h)). At the sight of the results, it can be seen that the acidification of fish-canning wastewater is possible even at high saline concentrations (27.7 g NaCl/L). On the other hand, the enrichment and accumulation results show us promising news and which direction has to be followed: PHAs can be obtained from challenging substrates, and the feeding mode during the accumulation stage has an important role to play when it comes to inhibition.

Keywords: acidogenic fermentation; fish-canning wastewater; mixed culture; polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs); saline conditions; volatile fatty acids (VFAs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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