To remove dissolved nutrients from river water flowing into lakes and marshes, water purification by using water hyacinth, reed and other higher aquatic plants has been promoted.
Generally, however, there are many problems associated with higher aquatic plants such as low absorption of dissolved nutrients, no absorption of nutrients when nutrient concentration is low, and little adaptation when the water temperature is low. We therefore designed and tested a filamentous algae system instead of using higher aquatic plants. The system can continuously cultivate filamentous algae, has a high growth ability and can be adapted to a wide range of water temperatures, throughout the year.
We conducted in field experiments on the ability of filamentous algae of the system to absorb dissolved orthophosphate. The results showed that filamentous algae's absorption ability depends on the stream regime, the concentration of nutrient in raw water, and the temperature, except the radiation. We therefore formulated the ability of filamentous algae to absorb phosphorus using three factors as functions. Representative values obtained were as follows. When we treated raw water of dissolved orthophosphate concentration of 30
μg·
l -1 at a water temperature of 20°C, we found that the dissolved orthophosphate absorbing ability was 70-90mg·m
-2·d
-1.
View full abstract