Cadmium and copper biosorption by a bacterial strain isolated from South Africa Antimony mine

Abstract

A heavy-metal resistant bacterium (GM 16) was isolated from a South African antimony mine, and the non-viable cells of the isolate were used to investigate its biosorption capacity for Cd(II) and Cu(II) from aqueous solution in a batch process. The biosorption of both metals were found to be influenced by factors such as pH of the metal solution, initial metal ion and biomass concentrations, rate of agitation, presence of other metal ions, contact time of the metal solution with the biomass and temperature. The initial biosorption of both Cd(II) and Cu(II) was rapid and equilibrium was reached within 1 hour of biomass contact with the metal solutions. The sorption of both metal ions was higher in weak acid than in strong acid conditions and the optimum pH values for Cd(II) and Cu(II) biosorption were 7 and 6, respectively. The presence of the other metal ions in the metal adsorption media influenced the biosorption of both Cd(II) and Cu(II). Mg2+ ions decreased the uptake of Cu(II) and Cd(II) by 4.7 and 6.5 %, respectively. Whereas K+, Na+ and Ca2+ ions increased the uptake of Cd(II) by 12.3, 8.7, and 3.2 %, respectively, they slightly decreased the sorption Cu(II) (2-6.4 %). Increases in initial metal ion (40-120 mg L-1) and biomass (0.8-4.8 g L-1) concentrations enhanced the sorption of Cd(II) and Cu(II) by GM16 biomass. When the biomass concentration was increased from 0.8 to 4.8 g L-1, the biosorption capacity of Cd(II) increased from 5.5 to 14.5 mg g-1 while that of Cu(II) increased from 2.8 to 14.7 mg g-1 at optimum pHs and a temperature of 40 °C. Maximum adsorption of both metals occurred at an agitation rate of 100 rpm. In addition, increase in initial metal ion concentration from 40-120 mg L-1 increased the initial adsorption rates (h) and the equilibrium metal sorption capacity (qe) of the GM 16 biomass from 6.07 to 16.51 mg g-1 for Cu(II) and 8.9 to 17.9 mg g g-1 for Cd(II). Adsorption equilibrium data for both metal ions fitted well to the Langmuir adsorption model with high correlation coefficients (r2 > 0.90) but the data for Cu(II) could also be described by the Freundlich adsorption model. Increase in temperature from 25-40 °C only caused marginal increases in maximum metal sorption capacities (qmax). The results on kinetic analysis showed that the biosorption processes of Cd(II) and Cu(II) ions by the non-viable GM 16 cells followed pseudo-second order kinetic model betterthan the pseudo-first order model, although the calculated metal sorption capacities obtained with the model were overestimated. The calculated thermodynamic parameters showed that the biosorption of Cd(II) and Cu(II) ions was feasible, spontaneous and slightly endothermic for Cd(II) but slightly exothermic for Cu(II) under examined conditions. Based on 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing, the bacterial isolate (GM 16) was identified as a Bacillus sp. and is closely related to Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus cereus strains. The biosorption capacity of the non-viable GM 16 biomass was higher than the biosorption capacity reported for the viable GM 16 cells, 65 % of Cd(II) was removed by non-viable biomass whereas 48 % was removed by the viable biomass. For the biosorption of Cu(II), the % metal ion adsorbed for the non-viable GM 16 cells was slightly higher than the % adsorbed for the viable cells although not statistically significant. Only 67 % of Cu(II) was removed by the non-viable cells whereas 65 % was removed by the viable cells.