Interaction Effect of Filler Material on Fungal Biomass Activity for Heavy Metal Biosorption in Stormwater

Abstract: In the wake of ever more occurring and evident consequences brought by climate change such as droughts and an increasing world population, a responsible use and handling of freshwater has never been as important as before. Stormwater is more than often not treated and simply released back in nature with any kind of pollution it has collected on its way, one of which being heavy metals. By treating stormwater not only would this underutilised resource be made use of, creating a new source of freshwater, but environmental pollution caused by untreated stormwater could be potentially decreased, as it can be converted into a potential resource rather than a waste caused by nature. There are a number of already established methods to lower the concentration of heavy metals in water, however there are inherent economical and practical disadvantages with each of them. A method that has shown promising results with potential to challenge these contemporary solutions is biosorption. This study has explored the use of fungal biomass of Rhizopus oryzae for heavy metal biosorption in conjuncture with an organic filler material. The metals investigated were Zn, Cu and Fe. Moreover, the effects of pre-treating the fungal biomass with primarily NaOH were also investigated together with the optimal ratio between biomass and filler material and retention time, in order to maximise biosorption.Pre-treating the fungal biomass with NaOH resulted in a considerable increase in biosorption. Moreover, the presence of the filler material had a positive impact on biosorption by further enhancing it. The best effect was obtained at a 4:1 ratio between biomass and filler material. Finally, the best retention time was determined to be around 2 hours, slowly levelling off at higher retention times. However, the use of pre-treated R. oryzae with filler material did not prove to be efficient regarding the removal of heavy metal ions in stormwater at very low concentration of metals, between approximately 4 to 10 ppb. In the future, it would be worthwhile to investigate the viability of this method on stormwater with higher metal concentrations as well as looking into the effects of pH and temperature.