| dc.description.abstract | Environmental conservation and climate change mitigation impose the need to
investigate new routes for the treatment of wastewaters towards their valorization and
mitigation of CO2 emissions. Wastewater streams contain valuable resources, such as
water and nutrients, which are expected to become increasingly scarce for the
foreseeable future. Due to their composition, wastewaters can be used as substrate for
the cultivation of cyanobacteria, a sustainable feedstock for the production of biofuels
and added value products.
Cyanobacteria present higher photosynthetic activity than terrestrial plants and can
remove/recover nitrogen and phosphorous from wastewater via assimilation into
biomass, while fixating significant quantities of CO2 from atmospheric air or flue gases.
This creates the opportunity for the development of processes that can offer tertiary
wastewater treatment (nutrients removal) and CO2 emissions mitigation, while the
generated biomass can be utilized in downstream valorization processes (Figure 1).
From the plethora of cyanobacteria species that can be potentially used for wastewater
treatment and valorization, this work focuses on the cultivation of freshwater
cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 monocultures in various nutrientrich wastewater media. Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 is a cyanobacterium that
does not produce cyanotoxins and can be used as a more sustainable feedstock
alternative for the production of fuels, food and chemicals. Furthermore,
Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 can increase its intracellular sucrose synthesis
when exposed to saline conditions present in some wastewater streams, hence it can be
manipulated to produce added value biomass. The synthesized sucrose is a considered
a valuable resource, as it can be utilized in various industrial applications, including
bioethanol production. Moreover, sucrose can also be metabolically transformed by
Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 to biohydrogen via anaerobic dark fermentation... | en_US |
