Biosortion of Copper from Electroplating Effuluent and It’s Equilibrium Studies

The present work is concerned to remove Cu using the biosorption potential of fungal biomass Aspergillus oryzae. The dry fungal biomass was used to optimize various parameters such as contact time, initial metal ion concentration, pH, biomass loading etc. A maximum of 91% Copper removal was observed in 5 mg/L initial Copper metal ion concentration using dry Aspergillus oryzae biomass. The percentage removal of copper using various chemical pre-treatments is studied. A maximum Copper removal of 93% was obtained using sterilized dry chemically modified fungal biomass followed by 89% removal using sterilized wet chemically modified fungal biomass and followed by 85% removal using HNO3 doped chemically modified fungal biomass at 37oC, pH 2.0 and 150 rpm. Further equilibrium modeling was carried out using Langmuir, Freundlich, and Tempkin adsorption isotherm and the data were fitted. Langmuir isotherm showed the best fit with a correlation coefficient of 0.995. The kinetics Copper biosorption have been evaluated with respect to first order and second order kinetic equations and arranged based on its adsorption capacity. First order kinetics showed the best fit followed by Second order kinetics. The characterization studies were carried out using SEM. The Copper metal was found to desorb effectively using 1N HCL and was found to be 92 % and the reuse of desorbed biomass showed 89.9 % Cu removal. Further removal of Cu from Electroplating effluent was carried out using dry A.oryzae and the percentage removal was found to be 90.3%