How low can it go?: The effects of salinity and pH levels on Piccochlorum Oklahomense.

Abstract

Water quality is a growing epidemic in today’s world. It is a challenge to maintain healthy pH and salinity levels to grow flora and fauna. We predict that determining what affects the growth of this particular algae will be beneficial to the environment because the algae has many benefits to its surroundings. We ultimately created photobioreactors using four separate plastic water bottles using the methods listed in French 2019. We made these photobioreactors then proceeded to label each one as “control”, “pH only”, “NaCl only” and “pH and NaCl”, respectively. This experiment resulted in the “NaCl only” having the largest amount of cell growth and “NaCl and pH” resulted in having the heaviest dry weight. Our hypothesis was proven incorrect. This resulted because the low pH level did not allow the algae to grow and the salinity did not help the growing process.