Influence of ammonia-nitrogen on the diversity of microalgae in clean and highly concentrated wastewater – JBES

Fida Hussain1&, Syed Zahir Shah, Muhammad Saleem Khan, Wisal Muhammad, Sajjad Ali, Wenguang Zhou, Roger Ruan

Department of Botany, Islamia College Peshawar, Pakistan

Department of Biosystems and Bioproducts Engineering, University of Minnesota, United States

Key words: Microalgae, wastewater, summer season.

Abstract

The diversity of microalgae can be affected by different factors serving as source of their nutrients. The most promising factor which is highly variable for different clean and waste-water bodies is Ammonia-nitrogen (NH4-N). The NH4-N studied for different locations of the district Malakand showed a variation in their values in respect to different seasons. The areas studied has NH4-N value ranges from 0.4-3 mg/L for stagnant water, 0.1-0.8 mg/L for running water and 2.1- 4.4 mg/L for wastewater. The highest values were found to be in summer season for all the water bodies studied. The NH4-N values were enhanced by warm temperature in stagnant and waste water bodies, while there was no temperature effect on NH4-N of running water. NH4-N is a basic source of nitrogen for microalgae growth and stagnant clean water has sufficient NH4-N which is best suitable place for a variety of microalgae growth. Because of high temperature summer season could provide sufficient NH4-N in these water bodies. Excessive amount of NH4-N in a water body could limit microalgae variation and only tolerant species could develop which is a source of algal blooms.

Get the original articles in Source: Volume 4, Number 4, April 2014 – JBES

Journal Name: Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences (JBES)

Published By: International Network for Natural Sciences