JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

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Sanchooli N, Khandan barani H. The Effect of Nutrient Elements in the Culture Medium on the Biological Desalination of Deep Aquifer Well Water in Sistan by Live Algae Chlorella vulgaris. jwss 2025; 29 (4) :110-122
URL: http://jstnar.iut.ac.ir/article-1-4498-en.html

The biological desalination system has lower energy consumption and environmental impacts, as well as simpler engineering technology and complexity compared to conventional desalination methods. This study aimed to investigate the effect of nutrients in the Chlorella vulgaris algae culture medium on the rate of algae growth, salinity reduction, TDS, and EC. For this purpose, an amount of algae was inoculated into culture media-containing treatments to achieve a density of 5 × 106 cells/ml. The results showed that the highest amount of dry biomass of algae was in the deep aquifer well water + BG-11 culture medium treatment, with a value of 0.76 ± 0.02 g. The highest amount of chlorophyll a and b was observed on days 4, 17, and 30 in the control treatment, which was significantly different from the other treatments (p < 0.05). The lowest value of light absorption of algae was observed in the control treatment on all days. At the end of the 30-day experimental period, the highest reduction in salinity, TDS, and EC was observed with 27.60, 26.83, and 41.60 percent reduction in the deep aquifer well water + culture medium treatment, respectively, which showed a significant difference (p < 0.05) with the deep aquifer well water treatment. The results showed that deep aquifer well water, due to its nutrient content, has a high potential for algae growth and, as a result, biological desalination and the absence of the use of commercial culture medium, which can reduce desalination costs.