Restoration of Water Bodies

The objective of this report is to illustrate the Efficacy of use of Micro Algae (Phyco-remediation) for in-situ revival and rejuvenation of Ponds and Lakes, which have been rendered highly polluted due to inflow of untreated Sewerage/inorganic Chemicals/chemical effluents etc. As a result of these uncontrolled polluted discharges in the ponds and lakes, the BOD, COD, pH, heavy metals and E-coli bacteria etc., the water cannot be used either by human being or even animals . Prolonged conditions lead to contamination of ground water and spreading of disease in adjoining areas.

Bioremediation is natural, most immediate and cost-effective treatment methodology for bio- remediation of Pond, Lakes and Drains. The technology is not only green, but also developed indigenously by group of Indian scientists. The purpose of this Detailed report is to illustrate the potential of a technology that we’ve widely implanted in industries which has worked on some of the most contaminated and toxic industrial effluents and also successfully employed in Ponds and Lakes. The report gives a detailed explanation of the technology, its industrial applications, and also its application in Ponds and Lakes or its applications in any water body restoration. We also wish to explain also as to why algal technology is the most effective in-situ method for bioremediation of contaminated Ponds, Lakes and drains.

Bioremediation is defined as the use of either macro-algae or micro-algae for the removal or bio transformation of pollutants, including nutrients and xenobiotic from wastewater. Micro- Algae refer to unicellular, green micro-organisms, capable of growing in extremely harsh and difficult environments by taking in carbon-dioxide from the environment and giving out oxygen through photosynthesis. Their use for wastewater treatment and cleanup of river beds had been largely untapped until a few years ago.

1. Micro-algae do not need aeration. Instead of taking in oxygen, they give out oxygen during photosynthesis. That is the primary reason why in large water bodies like rivers, lakes and drains, rather than just a bacterial consortium, a micro-algal + bacterial consortium working in close symbiosis with each other is the only viable approach.
2. Micro-Algae are capable of correcting the pH of incoming influent. We have worked with pH as low as 1.5 and as high as 13 and have corrected it to 7.
3. Micro-Algae are capable of reducing a number of other nutrients from wastewater and water bodies, including hardness, Phosphates and NH3-N, heavy metals, color and odor.

Our commercially running installations has provided solutions to complex waste-water treatment related problems in several industries including

• Chemical industries
• Agro-chemical industries
• Textile & Dyeing industries
• Electro-plating industries
• Leather industries
• Oil Drilling industries

Traditionally, remediation activities involving ponds /Lakes and drains and rivers have either involved the following 3 mechanisms:

Bacterial consortia have failed time and again for this particular application because bacterial species are susceptible to a number of factors including Dissolved Oxygen levels, variation in incoming COD and BOD load and sudden discharge of toxic compounds. Algae being plant based micro-organisms have cell walls and are much more resilient to variations in the incoming load. Also, algae oxygenate the environment that they are in rather than being net consumers of oxygen. This implies that they can survive and dominate in very harsh, anaerobic conditions also.

Plant based systems have had limited success primarily because of the fact that the area under treatment needs to be huge. This is a factor primarily overcome by algae because algae are microscopic in nature and thereby have a huge surface area for treatment. Plus, maintaining plant based systems in drainage lines can be difficult.

The third system is very similar to our methodology except that there are better and much faster growing green algae which can remediate perform much better than diatoms. Moreover, every drainage system will have its own localized needs in terms of the consortia which need to be deployed. Having a standardized product for every type of water body, including drains is not going to effective.

Our group with 40 years of experience in micro-algae and 10 years of experience in dealing with industrial effluents brings its vast experience of working with extremely toxic and difficult effluent streams to the current problem. Phycoplus is a unique, customized product tested and developed by our group to especially bring it for use in on-site remediation of water bodies and drains. It consists of 3 ingredients:

• Live micro algae consortium
• Live bacteria consortium
• Micro-nutrients

• For every particular water body or drainage system, only a very specific combination of micro-algae and bacterial consortia will be most effective. Our laboratory first conducts a very elaborate testing on the effluent and identifies the algal-bacterial-micronutrient combination that will be the most effective. This combination varies from drain to drain and water body to water body depending on the local ecology, the effluent parameters, prevalence of different contaminants etc.
• Based on the micro-organism and nutrient combination, this product is then cultured in our farms. The consortia is transformed into a gel form, it is concentrated and stabilized to give it a one year shelf life. The final product consists of live algae stabilized which can be immediately revived when added into water and sprayed in to the drain.
• When introduced into polluted water bodies, the algal consortium establishes itself with the help of associated beneficial bacteria which act upon toxic organic loads and mineralize. The mineralized nutrients are taken up by micro algae which do photosynthesis by capturing CO2 and releasing valuable oxygen. Symbiotic bacteria are encouraged by the oxygen released by micro algae to rapidly degrade pollutants and bring the water body to normalcy at a faster pace.
• There are a host of micro-nutrients which in trace amounts and in the available form can trigger the growth of green alga. The micro-nutrients present in Phyco-plus boost the growth of green alga as well as diatoms.
• In order to ensure that treatment continues at night, select places along the drain may be lit to ensure that DO is maintained uninterrupted.

The following parameters will be improved ( More than 90-95%) once the treatment continues for a month and maintenance doses are administered in time.

• Immediate increase in dissolved oxygen
• Significant reduction in COD and BOD load
• Significant reduction in Ammoniacal nitrogen and phosphates.
• Significant reduction in odor.
• Significant reduction in sulphides.
• Reduction in Fecal coliform.
• Stabilization of pH around 7.0

Phycoplus will be mixed with sufficient water and spread evenly all over the cross section of the Pond/Lake and Drain as well at a particular location.