Waste Biomaterials for Removal of Heavy Metals – An Overview

Environment fortification must require the use of natural products instead of chemicals to minimize pollution. The detoxification of metal pollutants from wastewater by the development of biomaterials having higher affinity, capacity and selectivity had been found to be as an alternative over conventional technologies that were often inadequate to reduce concentrations in wastewater to acceptable regulatory standards. Plant-derived biomaterials and biomaterials of agricultural by-products for biosorption of heavy metals are an innovative and alternative low cost technology for treatment and/or reuse of waste products. Biotechnological exploitation of biosorption technology to remove heavy metals depends upon the efficiency of the regeneration of the biosorbent after metal desorption. The purpose of this paper is to approach one of the most relevant parts of biotechnology, namely bioremediation with its particular branch – biosorption – applied for heavy metal removal. In addition to that available information on the various cheaper biomaterials occurring as natural biosorbent, for clean up operation applications along with metal binding mechanism have been highlighted. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________