Optimized biogenic sulfuric acid production and application in the treatment of waste incineration residues

Spent brewer’s yeast as a selective biosorbent for metal recovery from polymetallic waste streams

“…Sequential biosorption experiments with synthetic single-metal solutions already showed promising results by increasing the metal removal capacity up to 90% after 4 rounds for Cu 2+ and after 5 rounds for Zn 2+ when using fresh biomass for each round ( Figure 4 ). In this study biogenic sulfuric acid that was produced in a previous project ( Kremser et al, 2022a ) was applied for the desorption of metal ions from the yeast surface. Diluted biogenic sulfuric acid at a pH of 1.2 could be effectively used to desorb Zn 2+ and Cu 2+ ions, therefore enabling the reuse of the biosorbent and reaching metal removal efficiencies of up to 83.6% for Zn 2+ and 89.6% for Cu 2+ after 5 rounds ( Figure 4 ).…”

“…Here, chemical precipitation is still one of the most widely and industrially applied processes. Kremser et al (2022a) presented a combined approach where after bioleaching of basic oxygen furnace slag, metals like aluminum, manganese, chromium and vanadium could be selectively recovered by the addition of sodium hydroxide. Nevertheless, this process is not suitable for large amounts of waste solutions since it produces a high amount of contaminated sludge ( Costa et al, 2021 ).…”