Fungal pretreatment of raw digested piggery wastewater enhancing the survival of algae as biofuel feedstock

BACKGROUND: Understanding about the impact of white rot fungi on indigenous bacterial communities, NH(4) (+) and turbidity in digested piggery wastewater, will allow the optimization of wastewater treatment methods and its use as a feasible medium for algal growth. Here, the white rot fungi were inoculated into undiluted and unsterilized digested piggery wastewater under different temperatures and pH regimes in order to lower the pretreatment cost. Diversity and abundance of the bacterial communities in the pretreated wastewater were assessed by PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis coupled with 16S rDNA sequencing. RESULTS: The research showed a significant reduction on the microbial diversity with the presence of white rot fungi which occur at pH 6. The distribution and presence of bacteria taxa were strongly correlated with NH(4) (+) concentration, pH, and the presence of white rot fungi. Variance partition analysis also showed that the effect on the chlorophyll content of algae in fungi-filtered wastewater was as the following hierarchy: bacterial diversity > NH(4) (+) > turbidity. Therefore, the algae in treated wastewater with less abundance of bacteria proliferated more successfully, indicating that bacterial community not only played an important role in algal growth but also imposed a strong top-down control on the algal population. The algae grown in wastewater treated with fungi reached the highest specific growth rate (0.033 day(−1)), whereas the controls displayed the negative specific growth rate. The fatty acid composition varied markedly in C16:0 and C18:0 between these treatments, with a higher content of C16:0. CONCLUSIONS: This study firstly showed that Chlorella can grow as cost-effective biofuel feedstocks in undiluted and unsterilized digested wastewater with high ammonium concentration and dark brown color because the bacterial abundance of digested piggery wastewater could be reduced greatly by the white rot fungi. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40643-016-0136-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.