Removal of zinc by live, dead, and dried biomass of Fusarium spp. isolated from the abandoned-metal mine in South Korea and its perspective of producing nanocrystals

Bioremediation is an innovative and alternative technology to remove heavy metal pollutants from aqueous solution using biomass from various microorganisms like algae, fungi and bacteria. In this study biosorption of zinc onto live, dead and dried biomass of Fusarium spp. was investigated as a function of initial zinc(II) concentration, pH, temperature, agitation and inoculum volume. It was observed that dried, dead and live biomass efficiently removed zinc at 60 min at an initial pH of 6.0 +/- 0.3. Temperature of 40 degrees C was optimum at agitation speed of 150 or 200 rpm. The initial metal concentration (10-320 mg L-1) significantly influenced the biosorption of the fungi. Overall, biosorption was high with 30-60% by dried, live and dead biomass. In addition to this, the potential of Fusarium spp. to produce zinc nanocrystals was determined by transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, which showed that dead biomass was not significantly involved in production of zinc nanocrystals. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.