No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Biosorption is a property of certain types of inactive, dead, microbial biomass to bind certain chemical components and thus also to concentrate heavy metals from even very dilute aqueous solutions. Certain types of biomass exhibit this property, acting just as chemical substances, as ion exchangers of biological origin. It is particularly the cell wall structure of certain algae, fungi and bacteria which was found responsible for this phenomenon. Some biomass types, serving as a basis for metal biosorption processes, can accumulate in excess of 25% of their dry weight in deposited heavy metals such as Pb, Cd, U, Cu, Zn, even Cr and others. Research on biosorption is revealing that it is sometimes a complex phenomenon where the metallic species could be deposited in the solid biosorbent through different sorption processes of ion exchange, complexation, chelation, microprecipitation, etc. A whole new family of suitably “formulated” biosorbents can be used in the process of metal removal and detoxification of industrial metal‐bearing effluents. The sorption packed‐column configuration is the most effective mode of application for the purpose. Recovery of the deposited metals from saturated biosorbent can be accomplished because they can often be easily released from the biosorbent in a concentrated wash solution which also regenerates the biosorbent for subsequent multiple reuse. This and extremely low cost of biosorbents makes the process highly economical and competitive particularly for environmental applications in detoxifying industrial metal‐bearing effluents.

No abstract