Cyanobacterial biofilm on zeolite substrate: potential biofertilizer (ZeoCyan)
The ZeoCyan project is funded by the Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization: UEFISCDI - PNCDI III/Programme 2/PED2021 Project duration: 24 months (July 2022 - June 2024) Project budget: 124.152 Euro Principal investigator: Dr. Bogdan Drugă
Project description This project aims at producing cyanobacterial biofilm using zeolite as substrate and wastewater as growth medium, and to test the usability of zeolite/cyanobacteria biofilm compound as soil fertilizer. The activities will be done as a joint effort of a team of scientists specialized on microalgae and plant research. Zeolites are inorganic aluminosilicate materials with extraordinary ion-exchange and adsorption potential. For such properties, they can be used to remove substances such as ammonium, orthophosphate or heavy metals from wastewaters. Due to their slow-release of water and nutrients, they can also be used as soil fertilizers. Filamentous cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microalgae that can grow in wastewater effluent (as photogranules), as they uptake the nutrients (mainly N and P) usually present in excess in these environments. They are also known to improve soil quality to plants, due to their high content in N and P. In the first part of the project we will attempt to develop cyanobacterial biofilm on zeolite granules, using multiple candidate strains from a culture collection. Next, the zeolite/biofilm compound will be dried and used ad soil fertilizers for tomato plants. The project requires only resources that are naturally available or even in excess (zeolite, microalgae, wastewater), and the resulting product (zeolite-based photogranules) will be used as soil fertilizer. Therefore, the methodology proposed here falls under the idea of circular economy.
Main objective To produce cyanobacterial biofilm using zeolite granules as substrate and wastewater as growth medium, and to test the usability of zeolite/cyanobacteria compound as soil fertilizer.