Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2014 Assimilation, a Biological Nitrogen Removal Strategy For Freshwater Ornamental Fish Hatcheries Fatemehsadat Fahandezhsadi Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Fahandezhsadi, Fatemehsadat, "Assimilation, a Biological Nitrogen Removal Strategy For Freshwater Ornamental Fish Hatcheries" (2014). LSU Master's Theses. 3909. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3909 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ASSIMILATION, A BIOLOGICAL NITROGEN REMOVAL STRATEGY FOR FRESHWATER ORNAMENTAL FISH HATCHERIES A Thesis Submitted to Graduate Faculty of the Louisianan State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Civil Engineering in The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering by Fatemehsadat Fahandezhsadi B.E Chemical Engineering University of Tehran, 2008 May 2015 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My gratitude goes to my adviser and major professor, Dr. Malone, for his great help, support and advice during my master program at Louisiana State University. I also thank him for his patience by listening to me and encourage me spiritually and academically when the research didn’t go in the right direction. Thanks to Dr. Gutierrez-Wing and Dr. Hall for serving on my committee. Thanks to Dr. Hall for helping me through the various problems I had with lab works and supplements. I thank Dr. Gutierrez-Wing for her guidance and extensive amount of time she spend to discus and help me to accomplish this research. Thanks Dr. Blouin and Fan Wing for helping me with statistical analysis. I would also like to thank Mrs. Sandy Malone for bringing me into her family and her spiritual supports when I was far from my family. Thanks to my friends and lab workers Asmita Phadke, Leslie Pipkin, Yasmin Mohammad, Jonathan Barnett, Davis Lofton and Marlon Greensword for their great help with my lab works. I thank Daniel Alt who helped me a lot to design and build the setup at first when I didn’t know enough experience of building experimental set-up. I also thank Matthew Louque for helping me to build the final set-up. My special thanks to my husband, Nima Chitsazan, for always being there and encouraging me to finish the research when I was feeling down. I also thanks my parents and my brothers for their financial and spiritual support. Thanks God who makes all things happen and helps me in every step of my life. This research was supported by Southern Regional Aquaculture Center (SRAC). ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 1.1. General introduction ................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Research objectives .................................................................................................. 3 1.3. Organization of the thesis ........................................................................................ 3 CHAPTER 2. BACKGROUND ..................................................................................................... 4 2.1. Ammonia in aquaculture systems ............................................................................ 4 2.2. Ammonia removal pathways ................................................................................... 6 2.2.1. Assimilation by photoautotrophic algae ............................................................7 2.2.2. Conversion by chemoautotrophic bacteria.........................................................7 2.2.3. Assimilation by heterotrophic bacteria ............................................................10 2.3. Polyhydroxyalkanoates .......................................................................................... 11 2.3.1. Application of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) for nitrogen removal .............12 2.4. Discussion .............................................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER 3. ASSIMILATION STRATEGY FOR AMMONIA-N REMOVAL FOR LOW PH FRESHWATER ORNAMENTAL FISH BREEDING SYSTEMS ............................. 16 3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 16 3.2. Background ............................................................................................................ 17 3.2.1. Estimation of volumetric TAN removal rate ...................................................19 3.3. Materials and methods ........................................................................................... 21 3.3.1. Experiment 1: Batch study of pH effects .........................................................21 3.3.2. Experiment 2: Batch Study of PHB Consumption rate ...................................24 3.4. Results and discussion ........................................................................................... 26 3.4.1. Experiment 1 (pH effects) ................................................................................26 3.4.2. Experiment 2 (PHB consumption rate) ............................................................33 3.5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 36 CHAPTER 4. A CONTNIUOUS LAB SCALE EVALUATION ................................................ 38 4.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 38 4.2. Background ............................................................................................................ 39 4.3. Materials and methods ........................................................................................... 42 4.3.1. Experiment 1: Continuous study of assimilation strategy ...............................42 4.3.2. Experiment 2: Air pulsing frequency under continuous loading regime .........46 4.4. Results and discussion ........................................................................................... 47 4.4.1. Continuous study .............................................................................................47 4.4.2. Air pulsing frequency ......................................................................................50 4.5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 52 CHAPTER 5. SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK ............................................................................. 53 iii 5.1. Experimental findings ............................................................................................ 53 5.2. Recommendations for further research .................................................................. 54 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 56 APPENDIX A: OBSERVED TAN CONCENTRATIONS FROM BATCH SYSTEM @ PH 8 (CHAPTER 3, EXPERIMENT 1) ....................................................................................... 66 APPENDIX B: OBSERVED TAN CONCENTRATIONS FROM BATCH SYSTEM @ PH 6.5 (CHAPTER 3, EXPERIMENT 1) .................................................................................... 68 APPENDIX C: STATISTICAL ANALYSIS (CHAPTER 3, EXPERIMENT 1) ........................ 70 APPENDIX D: OBSERVED TAN CONCENTRATIONS FROM CONTINUOUS SYSTEM WITH TAN LOADING RATE (CHAPTER 4, EXPERIMENT1) .............................................. 71 D.1 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 750 mg-N/day ................... 71 D.2 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 650 mg-N/day ................... 72 D.3 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 550 mg-N/day ................... 74 D.4 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 450 mg-N/day ................... 75 D.5 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 350 mg-N/day ................... 77 D.6 Data observed from continuous TAN loading rate @ 250 mg-N/day ................... 78 APPENDIX E: OBSERVED DISSOLVED OXYGEN (DO) DATA UNDER CONTINUOUS TAN LOADING @ 350 MG/DAY (CHAPTER 4, EXPERIMENT 2) ............ 80 VITA ............................................................................................................................................. 83 iv ABSTRACT Freshwater ornamental fish production is a major component of aquaculture in the southeastern United States. Closed recirculating aquaculture systems (RASs) allow freshwater ornamental fish hatcheries to mimic native water quality conditions for sensitive species. Total ammonia-N (TAN) removal is the main concern for closed RASs. Biological nitrification is the common method to