Abstract
The demand for gold has increased in the medical and industrial fields. Therefore, recycling this element has become essential. Although gold recovery using microbes has been investigated, there is a dearth of these studies on identifying the species that have a high gold recovering ability. Herein, gold (III) removal by microbial cells was investigated to obtain basic information on gold (III) removal from aqueous systems by biosorption and biomineralization. High amounts of gold were removed from the solution containing hydrogen tetrachloroaurate (III) by the tested microbial species, which included bacteria, fungi and yeasts. However, relatively less gold was recovered by biosorption using gram-positive bacteria, fungi, and yeasts than that by gram-negative bacteria. Therefore, we first examined gold (III) removal by biosorption and biomineralization by Pseudomonas saccharophila, which was able to remove the largest amounts of gold (III). Incubation time and other factors affecting gold removal were then examined. P. saccharophila removed about half the amount of gold (III) by biosorption and the remaining half by biomineralization.
Highlights
The demand for gold has significantly increased because of its increasing use in the electrical industry and the development of gold-containing drugs [1]
To confirm the biomineralized gold condition, the cell surfaces of P. saccharophila and C. krusei were analyzed via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray fluorescence (XRF)
N. erythropolis IAM1399 among the gram-positive bacteria; E. coli IAM1264, P. maltophilia IAM1554, and P. saccharophila IAM1504 among the gram-negative bacteria; A. niger IAM2534, C. globosum IAM9272 and IAM9427 among the fungi; C. krusei AHU3993, C. utilis IAM4220, P. farinosa IAM12223, and S. cerevisiae AHU3818 among the yeasts removed over 1200 μmol of gold/g dry cell wt
Summary
The demand for gold has significantly increased because of its increasing use in the electrical industry and the development of gold-containing drugs [1]. Recycling this valuable resource has become a subject of great interest. Several researchers have investigated gold recovery using microbial cells, such as bacteria [2], fungi [3] [4] [5], yeasts [6], and algae [7] [8]. There is little information on the species of microorganisms that have a high gold adsorbing ability
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