{"id":3161,"date":"2011-04-10T07:31:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T07:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/?p=3161"},"modified":"2011-04-10T07:31:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-10T07:31:24","slug":"algal-bioremediation-%e2%80%93-scrubbing-nitrate-the-natural-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/algal-bioremediation-%e2%80%93-scrubbing-nitrate-the-natural-way.html","title":{"rendered":"Algal Bioremediation \u2013 Scrubbing Nitrate the Natural Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new research has demonstrated that adding more species of beneficial algae to a freshwater stream, linearly increases the ecosystem’s ability to clean pollutants – Nitrates.<\/p>\n

Nitrate is known to be the culprit behind the hypoxic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, outbreaks of toxic algae and red tides. Nitrate being one of the key by product of chemical fertilizers, is one of the greatest pollutant of water. Controlling nitrate levels in water, especially fresh water has been one of the facts reinforced in environmental policies throughout the world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Michigan <\/a>have demonstrated that algal biodiversity can help in controlling the problem associated with pollution of water bodies with nitrate. Based on 150 different open artificial water channels to mimic different water habitats, the researchers identified that those channels with more kinds of algae were better as sponges in sopping up higher proportion of nitrates. A waterway with an eight algal species mix removed nitrate 4.5 times faster than a single species. Each algae used were from minutely different habitat and together they created an ecological niche thereby effecting better and consistent biofiltration. The study thus demonstrates that a high biodiversity will result in efficient eco system. Promoting biodiversity would be ideal and less expensive than setting up big water treatment plants. \u00a0However, for the pace at which we keep polluting the water bodies, we definitely can\u2019t expect the algal species to nullify the pollutant at an equal pace.<\/p>\n

More info about the research <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new research has demonstrated that adding more species of beneficial algae to a freshwater stream, linearly increases the ecosystem’s ability to clean pollutants – Nitrates. Nitrate is known to be the culprit behind the hypoxic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, outbreaks of toxic algae and red tides. Nitrate being one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[647,146],"class_list":["post-3161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algae","tag-algae","tag-bioremediation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3162,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions\/3162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}