Obtaining and Characterization of Native Cultivated Biomass in Wastewater Treatment Plants Sewage Aiming at Sustainable Composites Biotechnology

• Grant number: 11/17479-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2011
• End date: May 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Sônia Maria Flores Gianesella
• Grantee: Maximiliano Daddio Noffs
• Host Institution: Instituto Oceanográfico (IO). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The treatment system UASB (Reactor Anaerobic Sludge Blanket and Flow Ascendant) is the type of secondary treatment most commonly found in Brazil. Sewage undergoing such treatment, however, still carry a load of nutrients to the end of treatment. As a result, adicionaladvanced systems would be required to obtain better quality water, increasing the process cost. In Brazil, the effluent of secondary treatment is usually the one released in the rivers and springs, which ends up contributing to eutrophication processes. The idea of this project is to verify the feasibility of cultivating microalgae in wastewater in order to consume their nutrients while generating biomass rich in oil and possibly other compounds with recognized biotech value-added, which would be obtained from one side of the system and better quality water fromthe other side, serving as a model for future projects of sewage treatment systems to use bioenergy. This project can be considered connected to the project 10/50187-1 participating in the Program Biota / FAPESP towards its goals of producing microalgal biomass for obtaining oil and other products. Whereas the Research Program in the Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in the State of Sao Paulo's main objective is to stimulate and coordinate research and development to advance knowledge and its application in four major areas related to biodiversity the aquatic environment, the proposed project falls into two: the characterization of biodiversity and bioprospecting of continental aquatic organisms.