Release and distribution of heavy metals through industrial wastewaters has adverse affects on the environment via contamination of surface- and ground-water resources. Biosorption of heavy metals from aqueous solutions has been proved to be very promising, offering significant advantages such as low cost, availability, profitability, ease of operation, and high efficiency, especially when dealing with low concentrations. Residual biomasses of industrial microorganisms including bacteria, algae, fungi, and yeast have been found to be capable of efficiently accumulating heavy metals as biosorbent. This paper presents and investigates major mechanisms of biosorption and most of the functional groups involved. The biosorption process includes the following mechanisms: transport across cell membrane, complexation, ion exchange, precipitation, and physical adsorption. In order to understand how metals bind to the biomass, it is essential to identify the functional groups responsible for metal binding. Most of these groups have been characterized on the cell walls. The biosorbent contains a variety of functional sites including carboxyl, imidazole, sulfydryl, amino, phosphate, sulfate, thioether, phenol, carbonyl, amide, and hydroxyl moieties that are responsible for metal adsorption. These could be helpful to improve biosorbents through modification of surface reactive sites via surface grafting and/or exchange of functional groups.
N-Methyl morpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) is an environmentally friendly and commercially applied cellulose solvent that is suggested for pretreatment of lignocelluloses to improve biofuel productions. However, the underlying mechanisms of the improvements have been poorly understood yet. In an attempt to investigate the mechanisms, pinewood powder and chips were pretreated with 85% (w/w) NMMO at 120°C for 1–15 h. The pretreatment improved ethanol production yield from 7.2% (g/g) for the untreated wood powder to 68.1–86.1% (g/g) and from 1.7% (g/g) for the untreated wood chips to 12.6–51.2% (g/g) of theoretical yield. Similarly, the biogas yields of untreated wood chips and powder were improved from 21 and 66 (mL/g volatile solids) by 3.5–6.8- and 2.6–3.4-folds, respectively. SEM micrographs indicated major increase in the wood porosity by the pretreatment, which would confirm increase in the water swelling capacity as well as enzyme adsorption. The analysis of X-ray diffraction showed considerable reduction in the cellulose crystallinity by the pretreatment, while FTIR spectroscopy results indicated reduction of lignin on the wood surface by the pretreatment.
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