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Acidophilic microorganisms in remediation of contaminants present in extremely acidic conditions

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Abstract

Acidophiles are a group of microorganisms that thrive in acidic environments where pH level is far below the neutral value 7.0. They belong to a larger family called extremophiles, which is a group that thrives in various extreme environmental conditions which are normally inhospitable to other organisms. Several human activities such as mining, construction and other industrial processes release highly acidic effluents and wastes into the environment. Those acidic wastes and wastewaters contain different types of pollutants such as heavy metals, radioactive, and organic, whose have adverse effects on human being as well as on other living organisms. To protect the whole ecosystem, those pollutants containing effluents or wastes must be clean properly before releasing into environment. Physicochemical cleanup processes under extremely acidic conditions are not always successful due to high cost and release of toxic byproducts. While in case of biological methods, except acidophiles, no other microorganisms cannot survive in highly acidic conditions. Therefore, acidophiles can be a good choice for remediation of different types of contaminants present in acidic conditions. In this review article, various roles of acidophilic microorganisms responsible for removing heavy metals and radioactive pollutants from acidic environments were discussed. Bioremediation of various acidic organic pollutants by using acidophiles was also studied. Overall, this review could be helpful to extend our knowledge as well as to do further relevant novel studies in the field of acidic pollutants remediation by applying acidophilic microorganisms.

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No data was used for the research described in the article.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Curtin Malaysia Postgraduate Research scheme (CMPRS) under the Curtin University Malaysia for providing research fund to conduct this research.

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  1. Environmental Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Curtin University, Miri, Malaysia

    Sultana Razia & Tony Hadibarata

  2. Department of Chemical and Energy Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Curtin University, Miri, Malaysia

    Sie Yon Lau

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SR: writing original draft and revision; TH: conceptualization, supervision, revision; SYL: review, supervision, editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Razia, S., Hadibarata, T. & Lau, S.Y. Acidophilic microorganisms in remediation of contaminants present in extremely acidic conditions. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 46, 341–358 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-022-02844-3

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