• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.741-748
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• 2019

As the occurrence of harmful algal blooms (HABs) have become severe in precious water resources, the development of efficient harmful algae treatment methods is considering as an important environmental issue for sustainable conservation of water resources. To treat HABs in water resources, various conventional physical and chemical methods have been utilized and showed treatment efficiency, However, these methods can lead to discharging of cyanotoxins into the water bodies by chemical or physical algal cell lysis or destruction. Thus, to overcome this limitation, the development of safe HABs treatment methods is required. In the present study, adsorption technology was investigated for the removal of harmful algal species, Microcystis aeruginosa from aqueous phases. Industrial waste biomass, Corynebacterium glutamicum biomass was valorized as biosorbent (PEI-modified alginate/biomass composite fiber; PEI-AlgBF) for M. aeruginosa through immobilization with alginate matrix and cationic polymer (polyethylenimine; PEI) coating. The functional groups characteristic of PEI-Alg was determined using FT-IR analysis. By adsorption process used PEI-AlgBF, 52 and 67% of M. aeruginosa could be removed under the initial density of M. aeruginosa 200×10⁴ cells mL^-1 and 50×10⁴ cells mL^-1, respectively. As the increasing surface area of PEI-AlgBF, the removal efficiency was increased. In addition, we could find that adsorptive removal of M. aeruginosa has occurred without any M. aeruginosa cell lysis and destruction.