(735j) Biological Approaches for Beverage Wastewater Treatment and the Production of Single Cell Protein: A Life Cycle Assessment

Wastewater from beverage industry has become a global challenge. A bio-platform was proposed recently to utilize beverage wastewater to culture microalgae and bacteria. As such, wastewater can be treated and highly valued fish feeds can be produced simultaneously. The proposed platform consists of three different scenarios according to the different species that are cultured, including microalgae, phototrophic bacteria, and heterotrophic bacteria. Life Cycle Assessment was undertaken in this study to evaluate the environmental impacts of these three scenarios. For each scenario, stages such as cultivation, harvesting, wastewater treatment, separation, drying, and byproduct management were considered. The results show that when the concern is to increase the production of fish feeds, the scenario with microalgae should be maximized, while if the goal is to increase the amount of the wastewater that needs to be treated, the process with heterotrophic bacteria should be maximized. Suggestions were also given to replace parts of energy for cultivation and separation with solar PV and solar tower to mitigate environmental impacts.