Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2019) 21:1969–1978 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01743-8 ORIGINAL PAPER Improved production of lipid contents by cultivating Chlorella pyrenoidosa in heterogeneous organic substrates Hesam Kamyab 1,2  · Shreeshivadasan Chelliapan 1  · Chew Tin Lee 3,4  · Tayebeh Khademi 5  · Ashok Kumar 6  · Krishna Kumar Yadav 7  · Shahabaldin Rezania 8  · Sandeep Kumar 9  · Shirin Shafei Ebrahimi 10 Received: 23 May 2018 / Accepted: 31 July 2019 / Published online: 9 August 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The study is aimed to enhance the productivity of microalgal culture by varying the organic and inorganic components dur- ing wastewater treatment. A model organism Chlorella pyrenoidosa (C. pyrenoidosa) was grown in four diferent sources of wastewater namely piggery, palm oil mill efuent (POME), mixed-kitchen, and domestic wastes. The growth efcacy of C. pyrenoidosa on POME was tested for their ability to remove nutrients. It was observed that POME showed the highest chemi- cal oxygen demand of 700 mg L −1 . Meanwhile, the piggery waste had the highest amount of total nitrogen of 590 mg L −1 . C. pyrenoidosa species were reported to grow well with diferent nutrient sources and produce high levels of lipids. The highest content of chlorophyll a was obtained with POME (3 mg L −1 ) and domestic wastes (2.5 mg L −1 ). The optimum growth rate of C. pyrenoidosa was reported for POME as a substrate. Also, the results indicated the lipid content for POME (182 mg L −1 ), domestic sample (148 mg L −1 ), piggery (0.99 mg L −1 ), and mixed-kitchen wastes (117 mg L −1 ). The results above revealed that among the tested substrates, POME could be the best alternative for C. pyrenoidosa to improve the yield of lipids and ultimately, biofuels production. Therefore, the treatment of POME in wastewater using C. pyrenoidosa can boost clean technology and energy generation. In future studies, the screening of other waste efuents is needed to cultivate the microalgae and enhance biomass production to meet increasing energy demands and waste treatment applications. Keywords Chlorella pyrenoidosa · Lipid content · Organic substrate · Wastewater Introduction In the last century, a great deal of research and devel- opment as well as applications has been devoted to waste management (Wu et al. 2009). A wide range of conventional and emerging approaches has been estab- lished to efectively reduce waste generation constitutes to an acceptable level to discharge the treated wastewa- ter for reuse (Goh et al. 2019). The public demand for pollutant-free waste discharge to receiving waters has * Hesam Kamyab hesam_kamyab@yahoo.com 1 Engineering Department, Razak Faculty of Technology and Informatics, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA 3 School of Chemical and Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia 4 Innovation Centre in Agritechnology for Advanced Bioprocessing (ICA) Pagoh, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 84600 Pagoh, Johor, Malaysia 5 Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia 6 Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan, H.P. 173215, India 7 Institute of Environment and Development Studies, Bundelkhand University, Jhansi 284128, India 8 Department of Environment and Energy, Sejong University, Seoul 05006, Seoul, Republic of Korea 9 Centre for Environment Science and Climate Resilient Agriculture, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012, India 10 School of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia