Removal of Heavy Metals in Liquid Media through Fungi Isolated from Waste Water

Wastewater mainly from paint, leather, metal and tanning industries contain huge amount of heavy metals. Microorganisms including fungi have been reported to remove heavy metals from wastewater through bioaccumulation and biosorption at low cost and in eco-friendly way. An attempt was, therefore, made to isolate fungi from sites contaminated with heavy metals for higher tolerance and removal of heavy metals from wastewater. Many fungal isolates tolerant to heavy metals like Pb, Cd, Cr and Ni were isolated from sewage, sludge and industrial effluents containing heavy metals. There are various fungi (Aspergillus foetidus, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Aspegillus awamori, Rhizopus sp. , Aspergillus flavus, Trichoderma viride) which are used for removal of different metal. The majority of the fungal isolates were able to tolerate up to 400 ppm concentration of Co, Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu and Ni. The tolerant fungi were studied for removal of heavy metals from liquid media at 50 ppm concentration. In this paper we disscuse only two fungi mainly Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger and results indicated removal of varying amount of heavy metals with respect to Pb, Ni and Cr which gaves the maximum uptake of 12.44, 0.53, 0.05, and 0.55 mg/g was observed by fungi (Aspergillus flavus), Aspergillus niger, Cr10 (A. niger). This indicated the potential of these fungi as biosorbent for removal of heavy metals from wastewater and industrial effluents containing higher concentration of heavy metals.