Evaluación de la bioadsorción de plomo por Saccharomyces cerevisiae en agua sintética a escala de laboratorio

Abstract

The present work aims to measure the bioadsorption capacity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (commercial yeast) for Pb removal. In the bioadsorption process, parameters such as pH (2.5, 5.1 and 6.6), contact time (5, 30, 120 and 300 minutes) and different Pb concentrations (5, 10, 15 and 20 ppm) were evaluated. The research consisted in determining the growth kinetics of the yeast to know how much yeast (bioadsorbent) to use in the leaded water. The reading of the lead concentration was done in the Atomic Adsorption Spectroscopy (AAS) equipment. To obtain the maximum retention of the metal (Qmax) the isothermal model of Langmuir was used at a room temperature where a value of 7.89 mg Pb/g of yeast was obtained. The concentration with the highest percentage of bioadsorption was 5 ppm, in which 96.4% was removed at a pH of 5.1 and a time of 120 minutes. It was concluded that the yeast has a high capacity of Pb bioadsorption, however, when it exceeds 15 ppm of lead in the water, the removal rate decreases.