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Attachment of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans onto different solid substrates and fitting through Langmuir and Freundlich equations

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Abstract

Attachments of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 23270 onto elemental sulfur, quartz and complex chalcopyrite were investigated by analysis of its extracellular polymeric substances as well as applying Langmuir and Freundlich equations. The two equations fitted the adsorption equilibrium data with significant correlation coefficient over 0.9. This indicated that bacterial attachment is complicated and involves Langmuir and Freundlich characterizations. Sulfur-grown cells showed the highest affinity for the three solid substrates. The investigated complex chalcopyrite possessed a higher maximum adsorption capacity for A. ferrooxidans than elemental sulfur or quartz. The Freundlich fitting parameters suggested that quartz had a weaker adsorption capacity and smaller adsorption areas than elemental sulfur or the complex chalcopyrite. It is not the content of total carbohydrates or proteins in EPS but their ratios that determine the affinity differences between cells and substrates.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (20803094), the Postdoctoral Foundation of China (2012T50710), the Science and Technology Program of Hunan Province (2011RS4068). We would like to thank Dr. Paulina Uribe for her revision for this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Biohydrometallurgy of Ministry of Education, School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, China

    Le-Xian Xia, Zhen Shen, Wen-Juan Sun & Guan-Zhou Qiu

  2. Centro de Estudios en Hidro/Electrometalurgia, Departamento de Ingenierfa de Minas, Universidad de Chile, Beaucheff 861, Santiago, Chile

    Le-Xian Xia & Tomas Vargas

  3. Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100190, China

    Ren-Man Ruan

  4. Chuanshan College, University of South China, Hengyang, 421001, Hunan, China

    Zhen-Da Xie

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  1. Le-Xian Xia
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  2. Zhen Shen
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  3. Tomas Vargas
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  4. Wen-Juan Sun
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Correspondence to Le-Xian Xia.

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Xia, LX., Shen, Z., Vargas, T. et al. Attachment of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans onto different solid substrates and fitting through Langmuir and Freundlich equations. Biotechnol Lett 35, 2129–2136 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-013-1316-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-013-1316-1

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