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Currently dairy processing by-products, such as whey, still propose a significant threat to the environment if unproperly disposed. Microalgal bioconversion of such lactose containing substrates can be used for production of valuable microalgae-derived bio-products as well as for significant reduction of environmental risks. Moreover, it could significantly reduce microalgae biomass production costs, being a significant obstacle in commercialization of many microalgae species. This review summarizes current knowledge on the use of lactose containing substrates, e.g. whey, for the production of value-added products by microalgae, including information on producer cultures, fermentation methods and cultivation conditions, bioprocess productivity and ability of microalgal cultures to produce β-galactosidases. It can be stated, that despite several limitations lactose-containing substrates can be successfully used for both—the production of microalgal biomass and removal of high amounts of excess nutrients from the cultivation media. Moreover, co-cultivation of microalgae and other microorganisms can further increase the removal of nutrients and the production of biomass. Further investigations on lactose metabolism by microalgae, selection of suitable strains and optimisation of the cultivation process is required in order to enable large-scale microalgae production on these substrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whey is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese or casein and has several commercial uses. In environmental point of view, whey is kind of waste which has high pollution level due to it’s contain high organic compound with BOD and COD value 50 and 80 g/L respectively. On the other side, whey also contain an amount of lactose (4.5%-5%); lactose can be used as carbon source and raw material for producing ethanol via fermentation using yeast strain Kluyveromyces marxianus. The objective of this research is to investigate the ethanol production kinetics from crude whey through fermentation using Kluyveromyces marxianus and to predict the model kinetics parameter. The yeast was able to metabolize most of the lactose within 16 h to give 8.64 g/L ethanol, 4.43 g/L biomass, and remain the 3.122 g/L residual lactose. From the results presented it also can be concluded that common kinetic model for microbial growth, substrate consumption, and product formation is a good alternative to describe an experimental batch fermentation of Kluyveromyces marxianus grown on a medium composed of whey. The model was found to be capable of reflecting all batch culture phases to a certain degree of accuracy, giving the parameter value: μmax, Ks, YX/S, α, β : 0.32, 10.52, 0.095, 1.52, and 0.11 respectively.© 2013 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)