Nano-magnetite was successfully immobilized onto the isolated lead resistant bacteria species using co-precipitation technique to synthesize novel nano-magnetic bacterial bio-composite material. This isolated bacteria was identified as Enterobacter sp. B2 under accession number KT213696. Scanning Electron Microscope micrographs implied that the magnetite nano-particles were dispersed onto the surface of bacteria. The magnetic properties of magnetic bio-composite material were determined using Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM). VSM evident that the bio-composite is characterized by its supermagnetic properties with 50.8 emu/g saturation magnetization that facilitate the material handling and separation. The feasibility of the novel synthesized magnetic bio-composite material for lead decontamination was explored against the variation of the processing parameters during the bioremediation process. The results elucidated that the equilibrium of lead bioremediation process achieved 90.5% within 60 minutes with bio-composite dosage of 0.1 g. The increments of both initial lead concentration and solution temperature have negative impact on the bio-remediation process.
Magnetic immobilized bacteria; Enterobacter sp.; Bio-composite; Lead removal; Bioremediation
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