Matthew Fyfe
M.ASc. Candidate
Civil Engineering
Queen's University
2020 - Present
Supervisor(s): Pascale Champagne
Research Project: Microalgae to treat wastewater and emerging contaminants
Matthew is focused on the applications of microalgae towards municipal wastewater remediation and biomass utilization. He is culturing monocultures and native polycultures of microalgae under different growth conditions to assess their ability to remove nutrients from wastewater while simultaneously producing viable by-products like biofuels precursors or nutritional supplements. Complementing this work, he is performing bench-scale experiments to screen different species for their ability to remove emerging contaminants (pharmaceuticals, personal care products, etc.) from Kingston, ON wastewater. In the future he hopes to study how microalgae can be used to remediate other forms of wastewater and use mixotrophic growth strategies to amplify the lipid yield of algal crops.