Highly effective reduction of phosphate and harmful bacterial community in shrimp wastewater using short-term biological treatment with immobilized engineering microalgae

Abstract

Shrimp farming wastewater includes high amounts of phosphate and microbiological contaminants, necessitating further treatment before release into receiving water bodies. After 24 h of shrimp wastewater treatment, alginate beads containing the blue-green algal Synechocystis strain lacking the phosphate regulator gene (mutant strain ΔSphU) at 150 mg L−1 reduced phosphate content from 17.5 mg L−1 to 5.0 mg L−1, representing 71.5% removal efficiency, with phosphate removal rate reaching 6.9 mg gDW−1 h−1 during photobioreactor operation. For short-term treatment, removal rates of nitrate, ammonium and nitrite were 42.7, 48.5 and 92.9%, respectively. Microalgal encapsulated beads also impacted the bacterial community composition dynamics in shrimp wastewater. Next-generation sequencing targeting the V3–V4 region of the 16S rDNA gene showed significant differences in bacterial community composition after 24 h of treatment. Proteobacteria are the most abundant phylum in shrimp wastewater. After 24 h of bioremediation, reductions of harmful bacteria in the Cellvibrionaceae and Pseudomonadaceae families were recorded at 5.85 and 3.18%, respectively. Engineered microalgal immobilization under optimal conditions can be applied as an alternative short-term bioremediation strategy to remove phosphate and other harmful microbial contamination from shrimp farming wastewater.