Emerging biotechnology applications in large scale treatment of metals bearing waste waters

摘要

Systematic mechanistic studies on theaccumulation of metals by microbial biomass has confirmed theability of microorganisms to act as sequestering agents for metalspecies from solutions. Engineering processes based on theabove phenomena have been designed and can be used for thetreatment of large volume of waste water contaminated by lowconcentration of metal ions such as the ones from mining ormetallurgical operations. These engineering applications makeuse of immobilized biomass reactors of various configurations.The paper presents background information on the designsimulation and the pilot testing of immobilized biomass reactorsfor the sequestering of selected metals.