ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1600232
This article is part of the Research TopicFood Systems for Nutrition: Converging Economic, Social, and Environmental SustainabilityView all 17 articles
Cultivation of endogenous algal consortia for aquaculture wastewater remediation as a strategy towards net zero carbon emission: From lab research to practical application
Provisionally accepted
Qian Lu1*
Limin Yang2- 1Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China
- 2Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China
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Endogenous algal consortia were cultivated in a recirculating aquaculture system to recover nutrients from wastewater for carbon sequestration. In this work, microbial community of the algal consortia, roles of algae and other microorganisms, optimization of operational parameters, and carbon emission of the pilot-scale system were studied. The results showed that filamentous algae, particularly Schizomeris sp., are the dominant species in algal consortia. The interaction of algae and bacteria enhanced biomass production (0.90 g/L) and improved TOC removal efficiency (80.38%), demonstrating the excellent performance of algal consortia in wastewater treatment. In the lab research, under the optimal conditions, carbon retention of algae-based aquaculture wastewater treatment reached 185.20 mg carbon/L wastewater. In the 150-day pilot-scale experiment, 50.76 kg carbon (feed) was inputted into aquaculture system while 11.50 kg carbon was outputted as fish product and algae biomass containing 39.27 kg carbon was produced, resulting in an aquaculture process with net zero carbon emission. The results of this work will provide theoretical basis and practical strategies to the development of eco-friendly aquaculture mode towards carbon neutrality.
Keywords: Aquaculture wastewater, carbon emission, Algal consortia, nutrient removal, biomass
Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qian Lu, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China
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