Biosorption of Chromium by Bacillus subtilis Isolated from Ganga River

Abstract

Water pollution by heavy metals due to discharge of industrial and anthropogenic waste leads to serious environmental and health problems as most of these heavy metals are carcinogenic in nature. In the present study chromium biosorption capacity of live and dead biomass of bacterial strain HGB1 isolated from Ganga River in Haridwar, which was examined as Bacillus subtilis, following 16S rDNA sequence analysis, was examined for different physical parameters such as pH, time of incubation and temperature. Experimental results indicate that the Bacillius subtilis has maximum tolerance capacity up to 1000 mg.L-1 with highest metal uptake of 95.64%, 97.25% and 97.11% at pH 3, 60 minutes, 2.5 mg/mL biomass respectively in case of dead biomass. In case of living biomass, highest metal uptake was 81.64%, 96.79 % and 95.89% at pH 7, 72hr and 32°C respectively. The surface chemical functional groups of Bacillus subtilis identified by FTIR were amino, carboxyl, hydroxyl and carbonyl groups. The morphological changes were examined by SEM analysis.