Heavy metals are increasingly present in industrial wastes and effluents,
which can generate serious concerns for environmental quality and
human health. Consequently, there is a continuous expansion of
researches for new approaches and developments to guarantee
environmental cleaning-up. Although there are some physico-chemical
established methods for the removal of heavy metals from various
environmental compartments, biosorption gains further confidence as a
reliable alternative compared to classical technologies, which are
expensive and sometimes unreliable. This paper aims to analyze the
biosorption as a biotechnological strategy for the decontamination of
aqueous effluents containing heavy metal ions, in terms of its potential
for metal immobilization and uptake. The paper also focuses on the most
important parameters affecting the removal of heavy metals by various
categories of biosorbents both living and non-living forms of biomass
and provides new alternatives for modeling and optimization of
process equilibrium and kinetics. A special attention was paid to
biosorption mechanism, as a factual challenge for process optimization
and scale-up. The potential benefits and problems associated to metal
removal by biosorption are highlighted.Roumanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0559”, Contract 265/2011
