ABSTRACT
Environmental contamination especially heavy metals in water bodies has several health hazard effects on human health. Municipal waste, industrial waste, and agricultural waste release heavy metals containing wastewater into the environment. Some conventional techniques were frequently used for the removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions with certain drawbacks including less effectiveness, generation of a large amount of waste, time taking, high energy demand, and high cost. Very recently, the biosorption process gained attention for the removal of heavy metal contamination from aqueous solution due to their high efficacy, eco-friendly, and low-cost properties. Biosorption is a physico-chemical phenomenon and biological materials such as plants, bacteria, algae, and fungi are used as biosorbents. This chapter deals with the efficiency of biosorbents for the removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions. This chapter summarized the challenges, mechanisms, significance, efficacy, and applications of these biosorbent materials in the removal of heavy metals from aqueous media. These biosorbent materials contains hydroxyl, carboxyl, esters, amino, carbonyl, and phosphate functional groups that contributed to biosorption process which is discussed in this chapter.
