Spirulina, a new way to remove greenhouse gases in the arid and semiarid climate of Iran

CO2 biosequestration by using algae is one of the promising and environmentally friend methods. The present study aimed at investigating the ability of Spirulina platensis in terms of growth and carbon dioxide fixation under different salinity levels and also variety of CO2 concentration. To this purpose, analysis of growth parameters including biomass productivity, specific growth rate and carbon fixation rate during the 8-day periods by maintaining the same conditions, under 3 salinity levels (3, 1500 and 34000 µs/cm) and four CO2 concentration (0.03%, 2%, 5% and 10%) were performed. this test have been performed in flat plate reactors by using pure stock of Spirulina platensis culturing in Zarrouk's medium . in all cultures, microalgae showed the highest specific growth rate during the first four days, as 0.35, 0.23, 0.24 and 0.24 d-1 in natural water, respectively. The highest carbon fixation rate and biomass production of Spirulina platensis were related to natural water (the city of birjand) under 10% CO2 concentration( 0.49 and 0.98 gL-1 d-1) that is followd by pure water of 0.45, 0.09 gL-1 d-1 and artificial sea water of 0.42 and 0.84 gL-1 d-1 respectively.the growth rate was lower in artificial sea water because of high salinity.