Phycoremediation of Dairy Wastewater by Using Green Microlgae: <i>Botryococcus</i> Sp.

Dairy wastewater are usually much polluted due to the high level of nutrient content such as phosphate, nitrate, sulfate etc. The pollution level are indicated by few characteristics such as BOD (243 mg/L), COD (324 mg/L), pH (9.08), Total Nitrogen (65.06 mg/L), Total Organic Carbon (143.3 mg/L), Total Carbon (312.9 mg/L) and Inorganic Carbon (169.6 mg/L). In this study, Botryococcus sp., a species of green microalgae are used to determine whether it can purify dairy wastewater. In spite of that, the microalgae growth over phycoremediation process also determined daily based on hemocytometer counting. From 100% concentration of dairy wastewater, Botryococcus sp. was capable to reduce the parameters such as BOD of 73.3%, TOC of 65.1%, TC of 61.4%, IC of 58.3% and COD of 48.8% on the 15 days of phycoremediation. Meanwhile, for the 50% of dairy wastewater, the same microalgae be able to remove the parameter such as phosphate of 78.7%, BOD of 73.8%, TOC of 70%, TC of 68,8%, IC of 59.4% and COD of 50%. The overall result from this study shown that the Botryococcus sp. is useful to reduce the inorganic and organic pollutant in dairy wastewater and could be potential to be used for any different wastewater.