Appraisal of biosorption for recovery, separation and determination of platinum, palladium and rhodium in environmental samples

Abstract

The potential of metal sorption by certain types of biomass provides the basis for the development of a new approach to remove heavy metals when they are present at low concentration. Seaweeds, fungi, yeast, bacteria and other native biomaterials, such as industrial and agricultural wastes and compounds derived from plant and animal tissues (e.g. lignin, tannin, chitin and chitosan), can be used as metal sorbents. The literature review shows that in the case of biomaterials of plant and animal origin mainly basic investigation on the biosorption mechanism, kinetics and thermodynamics of biosorption process using standard solutions of platinum group elements was described. For the recovery of these metals from real effluents and waste materials different types of microorganisms were applied. Due to good sorption performance and high selectivity, microorganisms were also used in analytical application for the separation and preconcentration of metals from interfering matrix before their determination by spectrometric techniques. In this book chapter the employment of biosorption processes for removal/recovery of platinum, palladium and rhodium from wastes and the procedures of their determination in environmental samples using biosorption process and different detection techniques are presented and discussed.