First, the meaning of autotrophic organisms
As an ecological term, autotrophs are also called independent vegetative organisms, and the corresponding word is heterotrophs. Organisms that survive and reproduce by inorganic nutrition are the corresponding words of organic nutritious organisms.
Second, the lifestyle of autotrophs.
Autotrophic organisms, also known as producers. It mainly includes green plants and many microorganisms. They can make use of sunlight, carbon dioxide in the air, water and inorganic salts in the soil to produce organic matter through biological processes such as photosynthesis, and provide material and energy for the lives of various organisms in the ecosystem.
Producers' materials are transferred to consumers by being consumed by consumers, and at the same time, some energy is transferred. Autotrophic organisms generally have no digestive function, so they cannot swallow other organisms (such as animals and fungi). Therefore, autotrophs use other methods to maintain life, such as photosynthesis used by plants.
Application of autotrophs:
1, energy
Chlorella is a potential microalgae with high oil yield, which can be used for the industrial production of biodiesel. By constructing photosynthetic mutants, the biomass and intracellular oil content were simultaneously increased under the condition of heterotrophic high nitrogen, which provided a new research platform for increasing the yield of biodiesel produced by microalgae.
2. Anaerobic ammonia oxidation sewage treatment
Anaerobic ammoxidation is a biological process in which anaerobic ammoxidation microorganisms take NO2-N as electron acceptor and NH4+-N as nitrogen under anaerobic or anoxic conditions. This process is a new type of autotrophic biological denitrification reaction, which does not need to add organic carbon source and has less sludge output. Compared with the traditional nitrification/denitrification process, this process has obvious advantages.
It has great potential practical application value for treating high ammonia nitrogen wastewater, especially low organic carbon source wastewater. In recent years, the sewage treatment process with anaerobic ammonia oxidation as the main body has been successfully applied to all kinds of wastewater treatment, and remarkable economic and environmental benefits have been achieved.