Biosorpion for sustainable recovery of precious metals from wastewater

The state of the art of biosorption for application in precious metals recovery in recent years is presented in the current work. Precious metals including Au, Ag, Pd, Pt, etc. have increasing applications in newly-developed industries and electronic technologies; therefore, finding an economic, simple and sustainable technique for their recovery from wastes and wastewater is of great importance. The various kinds of well-documented biosorbents such as bacteria and biowastes, as well as the newer ones including viruses and living plants, have been introduced in the present work. Classification of the most important modification techniques to improve the selectivity, sorption capacity and strength of biosorbents, and also different mechanisms involved in biosorption have been carried out. The factors affecting the performance of biosorbents for precious metals uptake were investigated. Based on the recently published papers, the cost analysis and the kinetic, equilibrium and thermodynamic modeling were also reviewed.