Biosorption of lead and nickel by biomass of marine algae

Screening tests of different marine algae biomass types revealed a high passive biosorptive uptake of lead up to 270 mg Pb/g of biomass in some brown marine algae. Members of the order Fucales performed particularly well in this descending sequence: Fucus> Ascophyllum> Sargassum. Although decreasing the swelling of wetted biomass particles, their reinforcement by crosslinking may significantly affect the biosorp-tion performance. Lead uptakes up to 370 mg Pb/g were observed in crosslinked fucus vesiculosus and Ascophyllum nodosum. At low equilibrium residual con-centrations of lead in solution, however, ion exchange resin Amberlite IR-120 had a higher lead uptake than the biosorbent materials. An order-of-magnitude lower uptake of nickel was observed in all of the sorben