Sorption Performance of Live and Heat-Inactivated Loofa-Immobilized Phanerochaete chrysosporium in Mercury Removal from Aqueous Solution

The sorption behavior of loofa-immobilized phanerochaete chrysosporium mycelia in two forms, live (l) and heat-inactivated (hia), was studied for the removal of hg2+ ions from aqueous solution. using the langmuir isotherm, the two key parameters for the sorption performance, qm and the coefficient b, were obtained; the qm values for hg2+ ions were 72.46 mg/g and 92.59 mg/g and the b coefficients were 0.073 l/mg and 0.114 l/mg for the l and hia biosorbents, respectively. using the freundlich isotherm, the values of kf were determined as 13.28 and 21.30, and the values of the coefficient n were 3.22 and 3.51 for the l and hia biosorbents, respectively. although the biosorption data were well fitted by both the langmuir and freundlich models, the langmuir isotherm gave a better fit, with a higher correlation coefficient than the freundlich model. moreover, the essential characteristic of the langmuir isotherm model, described as the separation factor, was indicative of the favorable adsorption of hg2+ onto both of the test biosorbents (0