Application of fungal biomass of Pleurotus ostreatus in the process of biosorption of copper ions (II)

The objective of this study was to evaluate the capacity to remove copper ions (II) from synthetic aqueous solutions through biosorption using the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus. The fungus was grown in minimal medium and used as biosorbent dry. It was used a factorial design 23 with three replicates at the central point to determine the best working condition and this corresponded to the lowest concentration of biosorbent and longer experiment, removing 86.01% of copper ions (II). Kinetic studies allowed to verify the maximum biosorption revealing that in five minutes biomass reached its saturation capacity. The Langmuir model was the best fit to the experimental data of biosorbent Pleurotus ostreatus.