Valorization of traditional olive mill wastewaters as culture medium for microalgae

The present work aims to valorize the treated olive mill wastewaters obtained after adsorption onto activated carbon by using them as a culture medium for the growth of microalgae. for this purpose the scenedesmus obliquus (ccap 276/3a) was cultivated in cylindrical photobioreactors. common experimental conditions were continuous light,aeration rate (1v/v/min),stirring rate 350 rpm) and temperature at 25°c. under these conditions,the microalgal biomass concentration reached 0.9 g/l after 120h of growth using omw treated by activated carbon as culture medium. the modeling of the experimental results showed that the microalgae is following the gompertz model and the specific growth rate (μm=0.075h-1) which is much more important than the specific growth in the synthetic medium (μm=0.024h-1).