Abstract

Effluents from tanneries are one of the main sources of contamination with Chromium (VI) of water and soils. This metal is used in tanning leather and skins, steel alloys, electroplating, textile staining and as a biocide in water cooling systems in nuclear plants, discharging the metal to the environment representing a great risk to the health of living organisms, so in this work, we studied the Chromium (VI) removal in aqueous solution by the Ananas comosus biomass shell, by the Diphenylcarbazide method to evaluate the metal concentration in solution. Biosorption at different pH (1, 2, 3 and 4) was evaluate for different times. We too studied the effect of temperature in the range of 28 to 60 °C and the removal at different initial concentrations of Chromium (VI) of 200 to 1000mg/L. Therefore, the highest biosorption of the metal (100mg/L) occurs within 10 hours, at pH of 1.0, 28 °C with 5g of natural biomass. According to temperature, the highest removal was observing at 60 °C, in 3 hours, when the metal is completely adsorbed. At the analyzed concentrations of Cr (VI), fungal biomass, showed excellent removal capacity at 60 °C, it removal 1g/L of the metal in 45 minutes, besides it removal efficiently the metal in situ (100% and 97.2% removal in 100mL of water and 10g of earth contaminated, after 9 and 10 days of incubation, with 10g of biomass; so, it can be used to eliminate it from industrial wastewater.

Keywords: Biosorption; Chromium (VI); Pineapple; Biomass; Bioremediation