ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the latest trends in microorganism-induced heavy metal ions biosorption. Since biosorption is a similar process to adsorption, conventional equilibrium and kinetic models can be successfully applied. However, most of those models, like the Langmuir isotherm, which originally assumes monolayer adsorption by gases on activated carbon, have been developed in order to simulate simple cases of adsorption. The conventional models have been further adjusted to securely fit other adsorption-based processes such as microbial biosorption. Biosorption is a very complex process depending on the surface chemistry taking place in the microorganism’s cell wall and the solution of physicochemical conditions; hence, it requires detailed research on the modeling. Several models presented in this chapter have been used for a long time; however, they have been only recently applied for modeling heavy metal ions biosorption by microorganisms.
This chapter has been divided into two parts. The first section presents conventional models such as the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms and chemical reaction–based kinetic models applied for modeling heavy metal ions’ removal by microorganisms. The second part deals with rather rarely 174used models such as competitive, mechanistic, and numerical simulations as well as novel tools like artificial neural networks and response surface methodology. The application of the new techniques in mathematical modeling of microbial biosorption may lead to the development of successful methods for the designing and scaling up of biosorption processes for the treatment of industrial metal-bearing effluents.
