Zeolites and diatom growth

摘要

Zeolites are widely used in some Asiatic countries, as they are believed to improve water quality and selectively enhance diatom growth through silicon leaching. Culture experiments with the diatom Chaetoceros sp. in medium f, with no silicate, and enriched with two natural and three artificial zeolitic products, showed an enhancement of between 0.2 and 0.6 cell duplications, which cannot be as a result of higher silicate availability because solubility experiments showed that natural zeolites do not leach any silicon, and that the amounts released by the artificial products are too small to improve diatom growth.