Cyanobacteria for heavy metals removal: from pure metal solutions to electroplating industry wastewaters

Cyanobacteria are photoautotrophic microorganisms able to adsorb and/or accumulate heavy metals. Thus, they can be exploited as eco-friendly tools to remove and recover metal ions from wastewater. In this work, we evaluated the biosorption ability of three marine cyanobacteria in laboratory-prepared three-metal solutions and real electroplating wastewaters containing mainly Cu, Ni, Zn, Au, Pd, and Cr. We found that the pre-treatment influences the performances of the biosorbents, with a strain-specific effect. Furthermore, the feasibility of the process is strongly influenced by the concentration of the metals and the composition of wastewater.