The effect of impurities on metal biosorption

摘要

Industrial effluents contaminated with heavy metals contain various kinds of compounds that can be considered as "impurities" in the metal-removal process. These could be light metal ions, surfactants and chelating agents and that may significantly affect the performance of the biosorption process. In this study the effect of NaCl, as a model impurity, on the uptake of chromium(Ⅵ) and vanadium(Ⅴ) was experimentally investigated and mathematically modeled. Increasing concentrations of NaCl suppressed the uptake of both metals. The extended Langmuir model was used to describe the experimental results. The impurities, Na~+ and Cl~- in this study, were considered as a single "fictitious" component. The model was successfully used for prediction and simulation of biosorption isotherm under different conditions of biosorption.