What are the possibilities of using microbes for heavy metal removal from waste water?

Published on by in Technology

I recently visited a small scale foundry for environmental inspection.  They have a small waste water treatment unit also. My job was to conduct chemical analysis of the treated water. In the process we measured some of the factors like pH, temperature, electrical conductivity, concentration of iron and total organic carbon – TOC. And we found out that there is still heavy metal that is Iron (Fe) in the treated water. The existing treatmnet procedures require a lot of expenditure to upgrade and modify.  I was reading that some of the microbes could do this job very easily. Can anyone guide me if we want to treat waste water containing iron, can microbes be used for this purpose?

What are the different microbes to be used? I hear that F. thioxidans will remove Fe from waste water. Has anyone used this? Your experience much appreciated and will guide us.
 

Taxonomy

26 Answers

  1. Without knowing current treatment scheme, influent and effluent parameters (pH, BOD, COD, TSS, TDS, Iron, Oil & Grease, Flow) I won't recommend anything. As you  want solution for welfare of industry and society i appreciate your initiative, as a short cut, I can say to introduce some proven flocculants for heavy metals or bioflocculants as recommended by sarath babu. You can also suggest them to try iron removal filter as well in case only iron is issue).

     

    I have a green solution if they can go for plant upgradation because it involves conducting treatability studies and plant installation.

  5. Microbes for heavy metal removal

    ~~Microorganisms can be used to remove particular heavy metals from wastewater streams. There are two ways of doing it with something like iron.

    The first is through biosorption, where the microorganisms take up the iron into their biomass. The biomass can then be removed from the water (through filtration, centrifugation, etc.), taking with it a large proportion of the metal. The biomass can then be incinerated and you are left with an iron ore, which can be sold. All microorganisms produce siderophores (iron chelators) with varying levels of efficiency so we could probably find something that was particularly effective in their waste water and then stimulate this microorganism.

    The second process is through precipitation of the metal.  SRB can actually be very helpful here as they precipitate iron out as iron sulphide!

    Generally what happens will be a mixture of biosorption and bioprecipitation.

    I don’t think there is a F. thioxidans but Thiobacillus thiooxidans  (now known as Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans) has been used for ‘bioleaching’ or ‘mining with microbes’ as they convert iron in mineral ores to a soluble form, which then ‘leaches’ out of the rock in water and is then converted back to an insoluble form and harvested. It will depend on the iron oxidation state in the water as to whether these will be useful or not.

    A mixed microbial consortium will always work better than a pure culture microorganism anyway and the specific mechanism and type of bugs they need will vary depending on the water chemistry and the oxidation state of the iron in the water.

    Incidentally, you can also remediate waters for arsenic and mercury by using microorganisms to modify the toxic forms to less toxic forms.

    I have a few contacts who conduct research in this area and as most of the bugs are the same ones we’re dealing with in oil reservoirs. Need more help then contact me for further details.

    1 Comment

  8. Hello, I believe the Ability of Micro-organisms is extremely high.This process is known as Bioremediation and can proudly say that I have through my years of research work have isolated a natural bacteria that through Various tests including ELISA,TEM and followed by EDX seems to take within it all kinds of heavy metals like Chromium , Arsenic, Lead, copper,etc. It is very effective.Can lend to anybody who wishes.

  9. Iron removal

    Normally Iron is removed by oxidation & precipitation. Some times it require filtration post precipitation. Even if you considering the biological (Microbial) treatment as an option the footprint will be larger. Because the time required for the microbial action is 2 - 8 hrs. depending on the concentration of Iron in water.

     

  10. Hi Gregory, you seemed to have got plenty of feedback so far. I don't really actually hear about treating iron/s with microbes - Some company does treat wastewater using metal co-precipitation technologies - which is UniPure, based near L.A. (Calif). Specialised in metal removal technology. President of that company is Mike McPhee, easy going guy - maybe you can drop an email asking questions :) Their website also discuss how they use Iron to mitigate / facilitate the wastewater treatment process. Their technology is proven as their original technology originally developed from part of Govt Military / Los Alamos. http://www.unipure.com/

  11. Bio-sorption

    Saladin, there are brief sections in the attached papers about bio-sorption that may be of interest.

    Microbial removal of metal ions from waste water has been indicated as being highly effective. Biosorption of heavy metals in aqueous solutions by bacteria includes Bacillus cereus ( Pan et al., 2007), Escherichia coli ( Souiri et al., 2009 and Quintelas et al., 2009), Pseudomonas aeruginosa ( Gabr et al., 2008 and Tuzen et al., 2008), amonst others.

    Kind regards, John

    Answered on by

  12. Microbial treatment of iron

    As others have stated iron is not regarded as a heavy metal. Furthermore it can be beneficial in wastewater treatment as it will complex with chemicals such as phosphorous which can be harmful to the environment. Media rich in iron is often found to be good as adsorbing P. So the iron may present an opportunity if you look at the bigger picture of overall treatment required and if it can bind to say sand in a constructed wetland it will assist in removing P. 

  14. There is a process for acid rock drainage as well as heavy metals removal from Arctech. I believe the product is Humasorb and it has a track record of proven performance. Although biologicals work well in some cases Iron is easily removed through oxidation and precipitation as well.

  15. In most environments, iron is a limiting nutrient. Microbes produce a molecule called a siderophore in order to recover iron from their environment. I would guess that some are more efficient at this than others, and also that a google or google scholar search will turn up some candidate microbes. (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=microbes+efficient+at+iron+uptake )

  16. Hello, The micro organizations are living beings - biological None is able to eliminate heavy metals, it is not their vocation. they attack only organics, the alive one. oxidation is a chemical action which has nothing to do with the biological one with the presence of oxygen. heavy metals in waste waters are recoverable only by decantation. Any chemical or chemical organic action will involve consequences of long-term pollution. the anaerobe does not exist on ground the anaerobe cannot exist on ground.

  17. Microbes for heavy metal removal

    I do not know biological systems used for heavy metal removal. As I colleague said maybe there are some metal that is incorporated to the cell and removed as excess sludge. But it hapens when we have exceptional conditions as pH, temperature, etc. I would recommend a chemical treatment followed by a biological treatment.

  18. Iron is definitely amenable to removal by microbiological processes, as are many other metals (but not all metals under all conditions). Jim Gusek of Sovereign Consulting in the USA has put together an extensive database of literature related to passive and biological treatment of metals in mining-impacted water. You can access the database of references at http://www.sovcon.com/index.php/resources/sovereign-mining-resource-database-january-2015.

  19. What are the possibilities of using microbes for heavy metal removal from waste water?

    ~~A company called Casino Mining in Canada is looking at using microorganisms for metals removal from wastewaters. You can follow their progress on the attached website. They have also written a comprehensive review paper, see the attached link.


     
    http://www.casinomining.com/community/sharing_stories/wetlands/
    Casino Mining Corporation


     
    http://www.casinomining.com/_resour...review_-_Cold_Climate_-_YRC2014.pdf

  20. The process that you are looking for depends on what is the ending state of the iron and the waste water that you want to treat. If it is only required a reduction to iron (II) and a later coprecipitation there are plenty of studies on this process with iron reducing bacteria. If it is only required the crystallization and precipitation of the iron (III), there are studios on biocrystallization by bacteria. An example is the Pseudomonas aeurognosa SM1 that can produce iron nanoparticles. If there are other heavy metals present like chromium, copper, cobalt, mercury, etc.. Bioelectrochemical systems are important candidates to do the heavy metal removal. This technology can reduce the COD and recover the heavy metals simultaneously.

  22. What are you relating to? just Iron or heavy metals i.e. chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, selenium, silver, cadmium, antimony, mercury, thallium and lead It's a different ball game.

  24. I have heard of a biological process being used for iron and manganese removal which is often a problem in groundwater to be used for potable water in my country South Africa. I don't have direct experience in this. I would expect that a specific culture will be needed to seed and start the process and possibly other nutrients may be needed to get the effective cell mass growth for optimum removal of an activated sludge by settlement of dissolve air flotation.

  25. Its done all the time in Acid Rock Drainage

    I suggest that you look into the literature on treatment of acid mine drainage or acid rock drainage by use of artificial wetlands and microbial processes.  The technology is mature, numerous guidance documents and professional papers are available.  It has a small footprint with respect to flow rate.  Microbes work!

    Answered on by