Biosorption of dyes

Abstract

Biosorption has been employed as an alternative wastewater treatment process to reuse wastewater for better economic prospects and environmental consideration. There are varieties of adsorbents that have been utilized for the adsorption of dyes, including agricultural waste, algae, fungi, and bacteria strains. Although thousands of studies on the biosorption of dyes have been conducted in the last three decades, however, its industrial implementation has not been done, due to several factors such as low adsorption capacity of most biosorbents studied, degradation of adsorbents which create other problems, and the real adsorption mechanisms are not well understood. In this chapter, a comprehensive discussion on the biosorption of dyes is given. The available biosorption mechanisms, isotherms, kinetics, and thermodynamic aspects are presented and comprehensively discussed. A future perspective on the use of biosorbents to remove dyes in large-scale processes is also be given.