Environ Exp Biol (2017) 15: 233–238

Potential of Humicola phialophoroides biomass for zinc (II) removal from aqueous solution

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to estimate the Zn²⁺ biosorption by biomass of Humicola phialophoroides fungus isolated from creek sediments in a zinc mine area in Thailand. The Langmuir isotherm model gave a better fit for the result data more than Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherm models. Zn²⁺ removal ability in all H. phialophoroides biomass types as increasing Zn²⁺ concentration had the same pattern, but biomass pretreated by NaOH showed better Zn²⁺ removal ability than viable biomass, non-viable biomass, and HNO³ pretreated biomass. Maximum Zn²⁺ biosorption of biomass pretreated with NaOH took place at initial solution at pH 8 after 150 min. In addition, Zn²⁺ was well adsorped by NaOH pretreated biomass at temperature higher than 70°C, while desorption experiments indicated that the desorption efficiency with 0.1 M HNO₃ solution reached 92.31%.