Wechselwirkungen zwischen seltenen Erdmetallen und Mikroorganismen

Abstract

In recent years there have been a lot of works on the accumulation and removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions and industrial waste waters by different kinds of microorganisms. A variety of microorganisms are known to be tolerant to mercury, copper, chromium, silver, cadmium etc., or to have a high accumulation capacity for these elements. But nothing is known about the interactions between microorganisms and REE*-ions in aqueous solutions. The objectives of our experiments were to determine the ability of various microorganisms to accumulate REE and to determine what possible effects, in terms of growth, different REE-ion concentrations may have on the bacteria cultures. Experiments on the accumulation of La and Pr by a freeze dried bacteria mixed culture, carried out with model solutions, showed that the accumulation process is completed few minutes after contact. The uptake is independent on pH-value and temperature and amounts up to 63 mg REE/g biomass in both cases. A gram+ bacterium spec., isolated from an industrial waste water, accumulates large quantities of REE in dependence on the pre-treatment of the cells, e.g. in the case of resting or freeze dried cells up to 100 mg/g biomass and in the case of heat treated cells up to 40 mg/l.