Abstract
Industrial wastewater needs to be treated because of the heavy metals presence and their effects on the environment. The aim of this study was to remove heavy metals ions such as copper and zinc from aqueous solutions by using Escherichia coli (E. coli) biofilm which was placed on zeolite. The paper was experimental. Synthetic and real samples were evaluated in laboratory scale. To evaluate the removal efficiency, the effective parameters such as pH, copper and zinc concentrations, and contact time were examined. Optimal conditions were obtained with experiments on the synthetic samples. To study the adsorption isotherms, Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were investigated. The copper and zinc cations maximum removal efficiency at 40 mg/L within 10 days was obtained as 54.61% and 57.35%, respectively. By using Langmuir isotherm, the experimental data were fitted with correlation coefficients of 0.98 and 0.95 for copper(II) and zinc(II), respectively. The results showed that the hybrid of zeolite and bacterial biofilm system has the best efficiency for removing the metal copper and zinc cations.
Highlights
Heavy metals because of some properties such as non-biodegradability, toxicity, tendency to accumulate in photosynthetic organism and eventually presence in the food chain cause pollutants transfer to humans (Malakootian et al 2008; Kamsonlian et al 2011; Silva et al 2012; Munoz et al 2012)
The aim of this study was to remove heavy metals ions such as copper and zinc from aqueous solutions by using E. coli biofilm which was placed on zeolite and investigation of its aggravating effect with zeolite
X-Ray fraction (XRF) and X-Ray diffraction (XRD) methods were used for chemical analysis and determination of the phases in the zeolite sample
Summary
Heavy metals because of some properties such as non-biodegradability, toxicity, tendency to accumulate in photosynthetic organism and eventually presence in the food chain (even at low concentrations in the environment) cause pollutants transfer to humans (Malakootian et al 2008; Kamsonlian et al 2011; Silva et al 2012; Munoz et al 2012). Various methods including ion exchange, filtration, coagulation, adsorption, and electrochemical deposition have been used for treatment of effluents containing heavy metals (Kamsonlian et al 2011; Malakootian et al 2015a, b; Plaza et al 2012; Rosales et al 2011). The microorganism’s cellular wall has polysaccharides, proteins, fats and functional groups, which tend to react with
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