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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #263267
Title: Algal turf scrubbing: cleaning surface waters with solar energy while producing a biofuel

Author
item ADEY, WALTER - Smithsonian Institute
item KANGAS, PATRICK - University Of Maryland
item Mulbry, Walter

Submitted to: Bioscience
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/2/2011
Publication Date: 6/1/2011
Citation: Adey, W., Kangas, P., Mulbry Iii, W.W. 2011. Algal turf scrubbing: cleaning surface waters with solar energy while producing a biofuel. Bioscience. 61:434-441.

Interpretive Summary: Algal Turf Scrubbing (ATS) is an engineered system for growing attached, lawn-like, filamentous algae on sloping surfaces over which wastewaters of many types can be pulsed. Algae grows using the nutrients in the wastewater and are removed from the system by weekly harvesting. Compared to conventional municipal wastewater treatment processes, ATS systems have relatively low capital and operational costs, but do require large land areas and people onsite to harvest the algae. Previous reports have estimated that the cost for nutrient capture using ATS was comparable to other manure-management practices-around $5 to $6 for each pound of recovered nitrogen and around $25 for each pound of recovered phosphorus. Beyond the benefit of nutrient removal, algae from ATS systems has potential use a biofuel feedstock and/or organic fertilizer.

Technical Abstract: Throughout the long period of human expansion across the earth, the atmosphere and the earth’s natural waters have been used as low cost sinks or dumps for our human, agricultural and industrial wastes. Despite significant investment, the methods employed for the last half century have largely failed to achieve the needed nutrient reductions. Not only are surface waters in many watersheds increasingly eutrophic, but large semi-enclosed coastal water bodies, such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico have also become hypoxic over large areas. Algal Turf Scrubbing (ATS) is an engineered system for growing attached, lawn-like, filamentous algae on sloping surfaces over which wastewaters of many types can be pulsed. During the last decade, ATS has been demonstrated for tertiary sewage treatment and nutrient removal from farm wastes and streams and lakes; treatment rates of 40-80 million liters per day (lpd) are routine and entire river cleaning systems of 12 billion lpd are under design. Since the algal biomass is quite amenable to fermentation processes, several laboratories are now engaged in research & development on the potential of producing biofuels such as ethanol and butanol. Unlike the algal photobioreactor systems currently under development, the costs for producing a biofuel from the cleaning of wastewaters by ATS could be very low, essentially that of the refining cost.