Biosorption: Application Strategies

Over the past 25 years, intensifying research into metal biosorption elucidated the principles of this effective metal-concentration phenomenon. Biosorption can be cost-effective particularly in environmental applications where low costs of the metal removal process are most desirable. Some efficient natural biosorbents have been identified that require little modification in their preparation. Engineering scale-up of the biosorption process seems fairly straightforward, based on experience from conventional sorption operations. While it seems that biosorption could hardly have any competition in many types of large-scale environmental metal removal applications, the process has not been applied as yet. Several attempts for commercialization of the process so far have not been successful, due to mainly non-technical pitfalls involved in commercialization of technological innovations. As solid capitalization is required for innovative process ventures, partnership approach is perhaps advisable. However, the choice of partners appears critical. While mining and ore processing companies appear to be excellent “clients” for innovative clean-up technologies, each is invariably concerned with mainly having only its own environmental problems successfully addressed. Pioneering and propagation of innovative environmental technologies is not necessarily an appealing venture for them. The “suppliers” of sorption and ion-exchange technologies, while closest to biosorption, is a handful of huge transnational companies with difficulties in operative decision making. Dynamic consulting companies are in an excellent position to acquire and push new process technologies into the marketplace. However, they are not known as capital-rich entities. All these aspects make a wide industrial application of a relatively little known biosorption process quite a challenge no matter how well its performance may look from the R&D angle.