Abstract
Wastewater contains several toxic organic, inorganic, and biological pollutants. Wastewater treatment is an issue of great environmental concern worldwide. The accumulation and concentration of pollutants from aqueous solution by the use of biological materials is termed as biosorption and applied materials are known as biosorbents. Biological materials namely chitin, chitosan, peat, yeast, microbial biomass (bacteria and fungi) are used as chelating and complexing sorbents to concentrate and to remove pollutants from aqueous solutions. These biosorbents and their composite or nano derivatives contain a variety of functional groups that may complex inorganic and organic pollutants. The biosorbents are preferred to traditional ion-exchange resins or commercial activated carbons, and may reduce pollutant concentrations up to parts per billion levels. Biosorption is a novel approach that is becoming a competitive, effective, low-cost, eco-friendly bioremediation alternative for wastewater treatment. In this chapter, the removal performance and cost effectiveness of various biosorbents with few challenges are evaluated for continual improvements. To highlight their technical applicability about specific pollutant removal, selected information on pH, dose requirement, contact time, concentration range, remediation capacity, and suitability assessment of biosorbents is discussed.
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