CHAPTER 15: Biosorption of Metals – From the Basics to High Value Catalysts Production Check Access

Biosorption has been generally defined as the ability of some biologic materials to retain metal ions within their structure and it may occur spontaneously in nature as well as it may be used in technological processes to recover contaminated ecosystems. In the last five decades very interesting applications of this concept have been developed to remediate liquid effluents with low metal ions concentrations that may discretely contaminate soils, water and air. Several biosorption processes have been patented and are working effectively at industrial scale. Moreover, much work has been published describing a large choice of biosorbents and their optimized operational conditions. More recently, new perspectives have been added to the industrial usage of biosorption and this chapter aims, in resume, to review the basics of the physical and biochemical processes and to enlarge its scope in terms of new applications as an integrated and sustainable remediation procedure, eventually raising the market value of industrial metal residues by converting them into very valuable environmental catalysts