ABSTRACT
Extremophilic microorganisms are a tough group of living beings that can thrive in extreme environmental challenges and are capable of tolerating adverse conditions such as high or low temperature, salinity, pH, etc. There is a huge prospect of such organisms in the industrial biotechnology domain specifically their potential use for biofuel harnessing, enzyme productions, pigments extractions and wastewater treatments. Since the last couple of decades, scientists have been engaged in isolating and using some extremophilic microalgae that are capable to grow well in the changes of environmental conditions, for wastewater bioremediation coupled with elevated lipid accumulations. The present chapter is focused to select, assess and discuss various relevant study reports based on wastewater bioremediation and biofuel production under large-scale studies for various microalgal species under adverse and challenging environmental conditions. These microalgal strains are depicted to be halophiles (salt-loving), alkaliphiles (survive under elevated pH levels), thermophiles (grow under high temperature), psychrophiles (grow at low temperature), barophiles (survive under high pressure), etc. with their growth environments and potential tolerance capacity. The chapter is also based on the informative abstracts of research and review papers with a summarization of the core findings. Several past studies were included in this course of work to justify the background of this chapter, whereas the main focus was given to learn and understand the potential biotechnological applications of various algal strains as extremophilic organisms.
