An oleaginous filamentous microalgae Tribonema minus exhibits high removing potential of industrial phenol contaminants

Discharge of industrial phenol contaminants could cause great harm on natural environment. Through oleaginous microalgae cultivation in phenolic wastewater, pollutants can be phototrophically biofixed into biomass as feedstock for bioenergy production. It was firstly reported in this study that, an oleaginous filamentous microalgae Tribonema minus exhibited strong environmental phenol removal ability. T. minus filaments showed 449.46 mg g−1 of phenol-uptake capacity, obviously higher than those strains with low phenol absorption such as Scenedesmus dimorphus. And phenols could be removed efficiently at the initial phenol concentration up to 700 mg L−1. Simultaneously, through T. minus growth, phenol concentration could be decreased from 100 mg L−1 to the range of 0.1-0.5 mg L−1, which meet industrial discharge need of phenol contaminants in most countries. So Tribonema minus is a potential algal specie to help the construction of integrated process for both oleaginous biomass production and bioremediation of phenol contaminants.