The biosorption capacity of different cortex fruit wastes including

banana (Musa paradisiaca), lemon (Citrus limonum) and orange (Citrus

sinesis)peel were evaluated. In order to perform these experiment,
grinded dried cortexes were used package in 100 mm high, 10 mm i.d.
columns. The grinded material
was pawdered in a mortar and passed
through a screen in order to get two different partirle sizes, 2 and 1
mm, for all powders. To estmate the biosorption capabilities of the
tested materials, different heavy metals were passed througn the columns
and elution filtrate reloaded different times to increase the retention
of metals. The heavy metals used were prepared as synthetic samples at
10mg/L of Pb,Cd and Cu using primary standards. In preliminary
experiments using banana cortex, it was found thet materials with 1 mm
size showed higher retention capability (up to 12%) than the material
with 2 mm of particle size. Considering these results, 1 mm particle size
material was used in further experiments with the Other waste materials.
It was found that for Pb and Cu removal,lemon and orange cortex showed
better biosorption capability when compared with banana
cortex (up to
15% less for Pb and 48% less for Cu). For Cd, banana cortex showed better
biosorption capability 57%(67.2 mg/g of cortex) more than orange (28.8
mg/g of cortex) and more than lemon(12 mg/g of cortex). Reload of the
column with the filtrate after passing through the column improved the
removal capability of all the materials tested 10% to 50% depending on
the cortex and metal tested.
l. Introduction.
Metals are ubiquitous constituents in the biosphere, vital to our
industry, infrastructure and daily life. Since the industrial revolution,
metals have increasingly been redistributed in the environment, with
accumulation in terrestrial and aquatic habitats being
associated with
adverse effects on the biota and human health (Sparks. 2005). Common
sources for these pollutants to the environment includes rocks and
metalliferous minerals, but mainly anthropogenic inputs from agricultura,
metallurgy, energy production, microelectronics, mining, sewage sludge
and waste disposal (Landa. 2005; Giltmour and Riedel. 2009). Atmospheric
deposition is the major mechanism for metal input to plants and soils.
Volatile metaloids such as As, Hg, Se and Sb can be distributed as gases
or enriched in particles, while Cu, Pb and Zn are transported as
particulates (Adriano, 2001: Adriano et al., 2004). In terrestrial
ecosystems, soils are the major sink for metals in aquatic systems. Metal
contaminants can affect aquatic systems through runoff, leaching
and
transport via mobile colloids (Adriano, 2001; Adriano et al., 2004).
Once in the environment, metals represents a serious risk to the
different ecosystems due to their well known toxicological effects and
their ability to migrate to surface or underground water (Khaniki et al.,
2005).Due to their persistence and potential to bioaccumulation and
bioaugmentation, removal of metals from water has become an essential
environmental task. However, conventional processes present several
limitations in the removal of these contaminants from water and in many
of the cases, are not effective neither economically viable for the
treatment or low concentrations Of heavy metals (Popurl et al., 2007).
Among the novel approaches developed for the removal Of metals in wter,
technologies based on biological methods for metal removal and/or
recovery have emerged as cost-effective alternatives in recent years
(Popuri et al., 2007). Biosorption is a physical-chemical process. Simply
defined as the removal of substances from solution by biological

material. This a property of both living and dead organisms (and their
components), and has been heralded as a promising biotechnology because
of its simplicity, analogous operation to conventional ion-exchange
technology, apparent efficiency and availability of biomass and waste
bioproducts (Macaskie. 1991; Gadd , 2001. volesky, 1990; Garnham et al.,
1992; Gadd and White, 1993; Wang and Cheri, 2009). Several biosorption
studies have been carried out using microbial systems, mainly bacteria,
microalgae and fungi (Bae et al.,