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Biosorption of Heavy Metal from Aqueous Solutions

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Phytoremediation

Abstract

Metal contaminated water is known to have negative impacts on health and the environment and it keeps increasing. Solving this problem is a challenge since the conventional physical and chemical methods of treatment is costly. This chapter presents an overview of an alternative method, “biosorption,” of inorganic contaminated effluent. Principally, biosorption is a mass transfer process by which a substance is transferred from the liquid phase to the surface of biomaterials including dead bacterial or plant biomass and also agricultural waste, and then this inorganic element becomes bound by physical or chemical interactions by phenomena of complexation, coordination, chelation, ion exchange, adsorption, or inorganic microprecipitation. Brief overviews of biosorbents efficiency for metal removal form solutions are also discussed.

The overall process of biosorption is affected by the environmental conditions such as pH, temperature, and ionic strength of the solution so it is most valuable to express the set of equations to organize and predict metal uptake performance under those different conditions.

This chapter also discusses the biosorption isotherms which can be represented by empirical and mechanistic models. The first empirical models are simple mathematical relations including Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms and their extensions which is capable of representing experimental trends but without informative or predictive committed. The mechanistic models are theoretically derived supposing a set of reactions between biosorbent active binding sites and ionic species in solution which not only represent but also interpret and predict the effects of the employing factors on equilibrium metal distribution. Kinetic data in batch experiments and column studies which are normally characterized by empirical models are also presented here.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand

    Prayad Pokethitiyook & Toemthip Poolpak

Authors
  1. Prayad Pokethitiyook
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  2. Toemthip Poolpak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Prayad Pokethitiyook .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology Faculty of Science, University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

    Abid Ali Ansari

  2. Centre for Biotechnology, MD University, Rohtak, Haryana, India

    Sarvajeet Singh Gill

  3. Centre for Biotechnology, MD University, Rohtak, Haryana, India

    Ritu Gill

  4. College of Environmental Science, State University of New York, Syracuse, New York, USA

    Guy R. Lanza

  5. College of Environmental Science, State University of New York, Syracuse, New York, USA

    Lee Newman

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Pokethitiyook, P., Poolpak, T. (2016). Biosorption of Heavy Metal from Aqueous Solutions. In: Ansari, A., Gill, S., Gill, R., Lanza, G., Newman, L. (eds) Phytoremediation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40148-5_4

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