Abstract
Human and industrial activities produce and discharge wastes containing heavy metals into the water resources making them polluted, threatening human health and the ecosystem. Biosorption, the process of passive cation binding by dead or living biomass, represents a potentially cost-effective way of eliminating toxic heavy metals from industrial wastewater. The abilities of microorganisms to remove metal ions in solution have been extensively studied; in particular, live and dead fungi have been recognized as a promising class of low-cost adsorbents for the removal of heavy metal ions. The biosorption behavior of fungal biomass is getting attention due to its several advantages; hence, it needs to be explored further to take its maximum advantage on wastewater treatment. This review discusses the live and dead fungi characteristics of sorption, factors influencing heavy metal removal, and the biosorption capacities for heavy metal ions removal and also discusses the biosorption mechanisms.
Highlights
Nowadays, contamination of water bodies by heavy metal is becoming a great global concern [1]. e heavy metals reach the environment by two major sources such as natural sources and anthropogenic sources
Expansion of industries leads to an unmanageable release of heavy metals to the environment. is problem is highly observed in developed countries that produce huge quantities of wastewaters that contain a high concentration of heavy metals [2,3,4,5]. ese metal ions are persistent and nondegradable in the environment
Accumulation of heavy metals is the result of the disposal of concentrated metal wastes by industries [6]. These heavy metals generated from different industries as effluent reach the environment causing environmental pollution, which is becoming a threat to humans as well as other living organisms [3]
Summary
Contamination of water bodies by heavy metal is becoming a great global concern [1]. e heavy metals reach the environment by two major sources such as natural sources (volcanic emissions, deep-sea vents, forest fires, and geysers) and anthropogenic sources (mining and smelting sites, painting and coating industries, metal-manufacturing plants, and tanneries). Different conventional methods have been used to remove these contaminants from water bodies including chemical precipitation, filtration, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, evaporation, membrane technology, carbon adsorption, electrowinning, preconcentration, coagulation of wastewater, chelation, redox, and electrochemical treatment [8,9,10,11,12,13] Researchers concluded that these technologies have their limitations on cost-effectiveness, complexity, cause of secondary pollution, and alteration of the physical and chemical nature of the environment. E form and concentration of heavy metal are resolute by the source of contamination Most industries such as electroplating, metal finishing, metallurgical work, tanning, chemical manufacturing, mining and battery manufacturing, fertilizer, pesticide, and surface finishing [4, 10] generate various heavy metals to the neighboring water bodies and cause severe problems on various living organisms as shown in (Table 1) [3, 19]. Chromium causes human and animal hair loss, headaches, diarrhea, nausea which are the major symptoms of chromium exposure [15]
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