A study of biosorption of cobalt metal by Pseudomonas Aerguinosa gram-negative bacterial strain is presented. The present study is carried out to determine the optimum conditions of cobalt biosorption at ultra-low concentration (ppb range) in aqueous solutions. The receptiveness of cobalt metal on the extracellular surface of bacterial strain was examined by varying the pH, Initial concentration of metal and treatment time. Experimental data showed that effect of pH and treatment time is prevalent in biosorption of cobalt and by increasing both these parameters resulted in the efficient sorption of cobalt on the extracellular surface of Pseudomonas Aerguinosa. In some cases, higher initial concentration of cobalt resulted in higher metal removal. However, there is no clear relationship is obtained between efficiency of biosorption and initial concentration of cobalt.

Oyster shells are normally applied in wastewater treatment in the form of a powder; but the possibility of whole oyster shells removing metal ions in stormwater has not been investigated. The objectives of this research are to assess the application of whole oyster shells for removing metals in low concentration solutions and to explore the influence of the following factors: surface area of shells, initial concentration and exposure time, on removal efficiency. Experimental results demonstrated very good removal efficiency by oyster shells for removing copper, followed by cadmium and zinc; but was not effective in hexavalent chromium removal. Up to 70% removal can be reached in just one hour for copper with initial concentrations of 0.2ppm with 550cm2 of surface area (SA) of shells in a beaker experiment treating two-liter solutions (with an accompanying pH increase from 5 to 6.42). A removal efficiency (RE) of 57.7% and 33.3% was found for cadmium and zinc, respectively, with one day contact using shells of 300cm2 SA treating one liter of the lowest concentration solution; while only 14.3% was achieved for chromium under the same conditions. Mid-scale experiments with continuous inflow based on the 6-hour Saanich Design Storm demonstrated an 85.5% and an 83.9% RE of cadmium and copper in one day’s worth of contact time. There was no removal but in fact an increase in chromium and zinc was found for the mid-scale experiment. There was a positive relationship between initial concentration (IC) and removal efficiency for copper and zinc, but a negative relationship for chromium, while no relationship was found for cadmium. Up to 80% of copper can be removed at IC of 2.4ppm compared to 60% with IC of 0.65ppm with same amount of shells (by surface area). RE of 70%, 75% and 83% was observed for IC of 0.3ppm, 0.58ppm and 1.07ppm for zinc, respectively, with 154 cm2 SA. When IC of chromium is reduced from 1 ppm to 0.2ppm, RE tends to drop from 60% to 26%. There was also a positive relationship between SA and RE, and ET and RE. However, after a certain exposure time, increase in RE was negligible and sometimes, desorption would occur. Additionally, when the difference in surface area is small, the influence of this factor on RE was also small. When treating certain ranges of solution concentration, the effect of surface area on RE is difficult to distinguish. Moreover, the role of HRT in stormwater systems was not clearly found. / Graduate