Bioremediation of Mercury from Aqueous Solution by Disha Dadhaniya, Anjali Gupta, Rekha Yadav

Abstract: Toxic heavy metals in air, soil, and water are global problems that are a growing threat to the environment. There are hundreds of sources of heavy metal pollution, including mining, metallurgical, electronic, electroplating, metal finishing, coal, natural gas, paper, and paint industries. Of the important metals, Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic and Chromium (VI) are regarded as toxic. Out of these lead is one of the most hazardous and is widely used in many important industrial applications, such as storage battery manufacturing, printing, pigments, fuels, photographic materials, and explosive manufacturing. Various conventional techniques have been employed for the treatment of metal bearing industrial effluents but they are expensive and produces large amount of toxic sludge. Bioremediation is one of the techniques which help to remove or recover heavy metal at very low cost, even if present in small amounts. Of the different biological methods, bioaccumulation and biosorption have been demonstrated to possess good potential to replace conventional methods for the removal of metals. Studies have been carried out for bioremediation of lead ions from aqueous solution using micro-organisms isolated from lead contaminated environment.