REMOVAL OF ARSENIC FROM AN AQUEOUS SOLUTION BY PRETREATED WASTE TEA FUNGAL BIOMASS

Arsenic contamination in water poses a serious threat on human health. the tea fungus known askombucha is a waste produced during black tea fermentation. the objective of this study was to examinethe main aspect of a possible strategy for the removal of arsenates employing tea fungal biomass. thepretreatment of biomass with fecl3 was found to improve the biosorption efficiency. arsenics uptake wasfound to be rapid for all concentrations and reached to 79% of equilibrium capacity of biosorption in 20min and reached equilibrium in 90 min. the pseudo second-order and first-order models described thebiosorption kinetics of as (v) with good correlation coefficient (r2>0.93) and better than the otherequations. the data obtained from the experiment of biosorption isotherm were analyzed using thefreundlich and langmuir isotherm models. the equation described the isotherm of as (v) biosorption withrelatively high correlation coefficient (r2>0.93). according to the langmuir model, the maximum uptakecapacities (qm) of tea fungal biomass for as (v) were obtained 3.98×10-3 mmol/gr. the effect of na+, k+,mg+2 and ca+2 on equilibrium capacities of as was not significant. the variation of sorption efficiency withph showed that optimum biosorption takes place in the ph ranges of 6 to 8. promising results wereobtained in laboratory experiments and effective as (v) removals were observed.