Biotechnology for Zero Waste – Emerging Waste Management Techniques (Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain (editor) etc.)

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Microbes and Agri-Food Waste as Novel Sources of

Biosorbents

Simranjeet Singh¹, Praveen C. Ramamurthy¹, Vijay Kumar², Dhriti Kapoor³,

Vaishali Dhaka⁴, and Joginder Singh⁴

1Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR), Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, 560012, India

2Regional Ayurveda Research Institute for Drug Development, Gwalior, 474009, India

3Lovely Professional University, Department of Botany, Phagwara, 144411, India

4Lovely Professional University, Department of Microbiology, Phagwara, 144411, India

12.1

Introduction

The term sorption is defined as the attachment to the co-existing solid surface

by the charged species of a solution. For removing the metal ion, this technique

helps in the separation process. An efficient sorbent should possess a large surface

area along with the diverse functional groups present on the surface. Biosorption

is an alternative biotechnological method for the wastewater treatment facility

as microbes have a high surface area due to their small size. So, to interact with

surrounding metals, microorganisms offer a large contact interface [1]. Various

organisms such as algae, cyanobacteria, fungi, bacteria, and yeast act as an efficient

bio-accumulator. The removal of metal from the solution comprises the following

pathway – the first microprecipitation takes place, which enhances the uptake

of metal cations after attaching to the surface of the cell. Further, metal ions

translocate into the cell usually by active uptake process, which is known as

bioaccumulation. Then the bio-precipitation of metal occurs, i.e. metal precipitates

after reacting with the anions produced by microbes or extracellular polymers.

Finally, biotransformation takes place, which involves the metal volatilization [2].

The process that involves the usage of dead biomass formed from the byproducts

of fermentation waste is known as biosorption. The non-living biomass of actino-

mycetes showed a greater capacity of binding as compared to the living one for the

ions of cadmium [3]. For example, to remove the oxyanion, namely, chromates or

cadmium, the non-living cells of Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus laterosporus were

☆Simranjeet Singh, Praveen C. Ramamurthy, and Vijay Kumar are contributed equally.

Biotechnology for Zero Waste: Emerging Waste Management Techniques, First Edition.

Edited by Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain and Ravi Kumar Kadeppagari.