Flocculation behavior and mechanism of bioflocculant produced by Aspergillus flavus

Aljuboori AHR 1 , Idris A 2 , Al-Joubory HHR 3 , Uemura Y 1 , Ibn Abubakar BSU 4

Affiliations 

  • 1 Centre for Biofuel and Biochemical Research (CBBR), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University Putra Malaysia, Sri Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: azni@eng.upm.edu.my
  • 3 Department of Soil Sciences and Water Resources, Collage of Agriculture, Baghdad University, Jadriyah, Baghdad, Iraq
  • 4 Department of Civil and Water Resources Engineering, University of Maiduguri, P.M.B 1069, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria
J Environ Manage, 2015 Mar 01;150:466-471.
PMID: 25560664 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.12.035

Abstract

In this study, the flocculation behavior and mechanism of a cation-independent bioflocculant IH-7 produced by Aspergillus flavus were investigated. Results showed 91.6% was the lowest flocculating rate recorded by IH-7 (0.5 mg L(-1)) at pH range 4-8. Moreover, IH-7 showed better flocculation performance than polyaluminum chloride (PAC) at a wide range of flocculant concentration (0.06-25 mg L(-1)), temperature (5-45 °C) and salinity (10-60% w/w). The current study found that cation addition did not significantly enhance the flocculating rate and IH-7 is a positively charged bioflocculant. These findings suggest that charge neutralization is the main flocculation mechanism of IH-7 bioflocculant. IH-7 was significantly used to flocculate different types of suspended solids such as activated carbons, kaolin clays, soil solids and yeast cells.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MeSH terms
Similar publications