Production of single-cell protein from fish processing wastewater towards enhancing food security

• Main Author: Ong, Jia Qi
• Other Authors: Stefan Wuertz
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Environmental engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/163507
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

To meet the increasing needs of sustainable food supply, possible methods such as production of microbial biomass-derived single cell protein (SCP) with the use of food-processing wastewater may play an important role due to its low cost yet high conversion efficiency. For my final year project, I evaluated SCP production using fish-processing wastewater under controlled environment with the use of existing microbial communities produced by the fish-processing wastewater as inoculant to continue its production. Two sequencing batch reactor of 4.5 L working volume. They were operated at 6 minutes feeding, 1354 minutes aerobic phase, 60 minutes settling and 20 minutes of discharge. The biomass yield of both reactors were overall was 0.03 g of TSS/g of SCOD fed and 0.017 g of TSS/g of SCOD fed for H2 and H3 reactor respectively. The protein content for both reactors were 50% to 59% and contain amino acid content that were known to be essential for fish feed. Microbial bacteria that were dominated within the reactor such as Chryseobacterium, Lysobacter and more. This showed that fish-processing wastewater can be used for SCP with the possibility of microbial community growth.