Microbial Removal of Arsenic

Abstract

Bangladesh is currently the subject of the world's largest mass arsenic poisoning in history. Groundwater throughout Bangladesh and West Bengal is contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic from the alluvial and deltaic sediments that form the region's aquifers. It has been estimated that 75 million people are at risk of developing health effects associated with the ingestion of arsenic. This project focuses on the use of microorganisms such as bacteria and algae to remove arsenic from water. Arsenic in the arsenite form was used in the studies. Experiments were conducted with a common alga and wastewater bacteria. A common green algae Scenedesmus abundans was used for determining arsenic uptake in batch experiments. Results of the experiments indicated that the algae biosorption could be modeled by the conventional Langmuir isotherm model. Algae morphology studies indicated that the algae cells were impacted due to the presence of arsenic as evidenced by clumping or loss of cell clusters. The wastewater bacteria also were capable of high percent of arsenic removal. Results indicate that microbial uptake of arsenic may be a viable method of pretreatment of arsenic contaminated water. However algae and sludge disposal would pose a problem and will have to be dealt with accordingly.

Perspectives of low cost arsenic remediation of drinking water in Pakistan and other countries

“…Some of the bacteria having arsenic removal capability are Alcaligenes faecalis, Agrobacterium tumafecians, bacteria NT26, Bacillus indicus, Bacillus subtilis, Corynebacterium glutamicum, Desulfovibrio desulfuricans, Galleonella ferrigunea, Leptothrix ocracia, Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas rsenitoxidans, Ralstonia picketti, Thiomonas Ynys1, Thiobacillus ferroxidans, etc. [104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114].…”

Treatment of arsenic contaminated water in a batch reactor by using Ralstonia eutropha MTCC 2487 and granular activated carbon

“…The As(III) rio desulfuricans, Galleonella ferrigunea, Leptothrix ocracia, Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas arsenitoxidans, Ralstonia picketti, Thiomonas Ynys1, Thiobacillus ferroxidans, etc. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

Review of arsenic speciation, toxicity and metabolism in microalgae

“…Some species of microalgae e.g., Chlamydomonas, Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus sp., Synechocysis sp. PCC6803 offer considerable potential for remediation due to the high percentage of iAs removal rate (51-80 %)(Ahmad et al 2010;Bahar et al 2013a;Gunaratna et al 2006;Jahan et al 2006;Jiang et al 2011;Mahdavi et al 2012;Samal et al 2004;Taboada-de la Calzada et al 1999;Yin et al 2012) …”