Wastewaters resulted from different industries in Egypt such as food, painting, service, pharmaceuticals, water valves, packing materials (e.g. cartoons) and inks industries which are drained with sewage wastes and underground water which contain different harmful concentrations of the most toxic heavy metals (e.g. copper and cadmium) to humans and wildlife. This study aims to screen, evaluate, and apply endophytic fungal isolates growing in industrial regions and are capable of degrading recalcitrant materials and accumulating heavy metals to decrease the environmental loading, solve the problems of pollution and improve the quality of drinking and irrigated water in industrial regions. Ten endophytic fungi were isolated and screened for uptake experiments. All endophytic fungal isolates under study showed cadmium and copper resistance with varying level. Among them, endophytic Penicillium lilacinum showed the highest potency to remove copper (85.4%) and good removal of cadmium (31.43 %). The Langmuir model was more able to describe the experimental equilibrium data for biosorption of Cd2+ and Cu2+ ions on fungal pellets under given experimental conditions than Freundlich isotherm model. High value of Langmuir constant b (0.121 and 1.54, L/mg) indicates the affinity of biosorption and the binding of metal ions Cu2+ and Cd2+ respectively, resulting in a stable adsorption product.
Key words: Biosorption, Endophytic fungi, Factory effluents, Heavy metals, Uptake
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