Multicomponent Biosorption of Heavy Metals from Aqueous Solutions: A Review

A wide spectrums of hazardous substances contaminate the environment due to industrial discharge in the form of wastewater that contains industrial processed toxic heavy metals from electroplating, mining, metal finishing, leather tanning, metallurgy, electronics, fertilizers, chemical manufacturing, and petroleum industries [1-2].Environmental contamination and public health concerns draw significant implications because of their potential toxicity, non-biodegradability, and tendency to accumulate in the tissues of living organisms [3].Heavy metals pose various acute and chronic disorders such as kidney damage, liver damage, gastrointestinal distress, nervous deterioration, pulmonary fibrosis, renal edema, skin diseases, and cancer [4][5][6].Several state and international agencies in industrialized countries have enforced strict regulations and legislation to control heavy metal pollution.These regulations designate permissible limits on industrially discharged metals into public sewage systems, and on land and in aquatic environments.Hence, industries need to remove heavy metals from their wastewater before discharging to the environment [7].Traditional technologies such as chemical precipitation, reverse osmosis, ion exchange, electro-dialysis, and membrane filtration have been implemented to sequester heavy metals from industrial wastewater.However, they pose some limitations with their high cost, low efficiency, high energy consumption, and the generation of toxic sludge that requires further careful disposal [8].