Biosorption of chromium and lead from industrial effluents

Abstract

Removal of heavy metals from industrial effluents prior to disposal is essential from environmental healthmanagement and economics points of view Search for newer treatment technologies for removal of toxic metals from wastewaters has directed attention to biosorption This technology has been studied extensively for removal of metals dyes and other organics from laboratory prepared aqueous solutions However very few reports exist on biosorption of pollutants from effluents The present study deals with biosorption of chromium and lead from industrial effluents using Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae newlineThe study was carried out at the Centre for Environmental Studies Anna University Chennai India Effluents generated by a local electroplating and a battery manufacturing industry were collected and analyzed for select newlinephysicochemical parameters The respective metals of focus in the effluents newlinewere found to be chromium 204 mg L and lead 102 mg L The biosorbents viz Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were acidic and their potentiometric titration curves revealed that the functional groups present on them were carboxyl phosphate and amine newline