Application of bacterial biomass as a potential heavy metal bio-removal agent

Water has been the most important element for saving life; the major global health problem has been water pollution that may be due to the wastewater discharge into the water bodies. Several techniques have been used for water treatment that is, physical, chemical and biological methods. Recently, the third method was the most effective one for the wastewater treatment. In this work twenty bacterial isolates were isolated from River Nile, Egypt to study their capability to remove some heavy metals from its solution. Agar plates amended with different concentrations of some heavy metals were used for screening the bacterial capability for removing the tested heavy metals. According to the identification procedures based on the BIOLOG system the bacterial isolate MSNIOF11 showed a similarity of 97% to Bacillus subtilis var. globigii, so it was given the name as Bacillus subtilis var. globigii MSNIOF11. The heavy metal removal process was pH and temperature dependent, where the maximum growth and heavy metal removal was recorded at 30°C with neutral pH (7.0). In the first 24 h there was an increase of the metal removal and there was no significant change after 30 h.   Key words: Bioremoval, heavy metals, Bacillus subtilis, biomass, biolog, MicroPlats.