Abstract
The biosorption potential of three fungal waste-biomasses (Acremonium strictum, Acremonium sp. and Penicillium sp.) from pharmaceutical companies was compared with that of a selected biomass (Cunninghamella elegans), already proven to be very effective in dye biosorption. Among the waste-biomasses, A. strictum was the most efficient (decolorization percentage up to 90% within 30 min) with regard to three simulated dye baths; nevertheless it was less active than C. elegans which was able to produce a quick and substantial decolorization of all the simulated dye baths (up to 97% within 30 min). The biomasses of A. strictum and C. elegans were then tested for the treatment of nine real exhausted dye baths. A. strictum was effective at acidic or neutral pH, whereas C. elegans confirmed its high efficiency and versatility towards exhausted dye baths characterised by different classes of dyes (acid, disperse, vat, reactive) and variation in pH and ionic strength. Finally, the effect of pH on the biosorption process was evaluated to provide a realistic estimation of the validity of the laboratory results in an industrial setting. The C. elegans biomass was highly effective from pH 3 to pH 11 (for amounts of adsorbed dye up to 1054 and 667 mg of dye g−1 biomass dry weight, respectively); thus, this biomass can be considered an excellent and exceptionally versatile biosorbent material.
Highlights
Control of pollution is one of the prime concerns of society today, since in both developing and industrialized nations a growing number of contaminants enter water supplies from human activity [1].many industries, such as textile, paper, plastics and dyestuffs, consume substantial volumes of water, using chemicals during manufacturing and dyes to colour their products
Tigini [19] has recently highlighted by FT-IR analysis that C. elegans grown on different culture media can have great variation in the composition of its cell wall and the same C. elegans biomass used in the present study showed a high chitin and chitosan content
The absence in the literature of works on fungal biosorption which take into account such a large number of real dye baths, differing in terms of dye types and dyeing processes, hampers a sound comparison between our data and those obtained with other fungal biomasses under similar conditions; based on these results, the C. elegans biomass confirms its high efficiency and versatility for exhausted dye baths characterized by different classes of dyes, pH and ionic strength
Summary
Control of pollution is one of the prime concerns of society today, since in both developing and industrialized nations a growing number of contaminants enter water supplies from human activity [1]. Despite a large number of lab-scale studies on the decolorization of mono-component synthetic dye solutions, there is a need to generate relative performance data on real industrial effluents, which so far have been considered very rarely in biosorption experiments. The biosorption potentials of three fungal waste-biomasses from the pharmaceutical industry (towards three simulated exhausted dye baths) were compared with that of a selected fungal biomass (Cunninghamella elegans Lendner) which in the light of previous experiments had already proven to be very effective in synthetic dyes and chromium removal with both mono and multi-component dye solutions, for simulated exhausted dye baths and a real tanning effluent [13,14,15,16]. The effect of pH on the biosorption process was evaluated to provide a realistic estimation of the validity of the laboratory results in an industrial setting
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