Remediation of pollutants with economical importance from mining waters: Usage of Cladophora fracta
Introduction
Mining is a strategic sector of the global economy. However, the effects of mining and mineral processing activities on human health and environment cannot be overemphasized (Emmanuel et al., 2019). The environmental impacts of mining activities have similar effects worldwide (Oyebamiji et al., 2018). These activities cause undesirable effects on water bodies’ water and sediment. The accumulation of pollutants in sediments negatively affects the natural life and organisms (Kanat et al., 2018). Mining sectors release various elements to the environments surrounding. Some of these elements are both has pollutant characteristics and economically importance. The elements having these properties chosen in the present study are copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni) and molybdenum (Mo). As one of the important nonferrous metals, copper is a vital and fundamental substance for economic and social development (Sverdrup et al., 2014, Wang et al., 2019). In fact, copper is required to build the energy systems of the future (Moreno-Leiva et al., 2020). Therefore, there is an imbalance between copper supply and demand (Watling, 2014, Granata et al., 2019). Also, high dependence on imported copper can pose major risks for a country’s sustainable supply of copper supply and economic development (Wang et al., 2019). Although Cu is an essential element in the biological processes of various organisms, it becomes toxic when present in excessive concentrations (Gaetke and Chow, 2003, Xie et al., 2020). Therefore, Cu is considered to be a sword with two edges (Nies, 1999, Chen et al., 2020). Among nonferrous metals, zinc is the third most widely used metal globally after Al and Cu (Sabnavis et al., 2018, Sinha et al., 2020). Zinc is used for various applications as steel galvanizing (Rudnik, 2019), rechargeable aqueous zinc ion batteries (Yao et al., 2020) etc. Also, zinc as an essential micronutrient in organisms and natural environments plays an important role in many biological activities (Kazemi et al., 2020). However, its excessive concentration in food and plants are of great concern because of its toxicity to humans and animal (Zhuang et al., 2009, Alam et al., 2020). Molybdenum is used as a lubricant additive, catalyst, corrosion inhibitor, and component in the manufacture of tungsten, pigments, and ceramics. It is a component of steel alloys and welding rods and is added to cast iron and stainless steel for hardness control (Morrison et al., 2006, Smedley and Kinniburgh, 2017). High concentrations of Mo are toxic to humans although humans require it (Wang et al., 2020).
Various treatment methods have been employed to remove various pollutants from wastewater. However, due to its advantages among these treatment technologies, the bioremediation option is promising for the removal of various pollutants from the wastewater. Bioremediation is a known process where beneficial microbiological agents are used to treat contaminated water (Jasmin et al., 2020). Also, bioremediation is used for contaminated soil (Erguven and Yildirim, 2019, Erguven and Kocak, 2019, Erguven and Demir, 2019). Bioremediation process is an ecofriendly method (Erguven, 2018). Living organisms including bacteria, fungi, yeast, algae, and plants have shown remediation capabilities. Low energy requirement, low operational cost, no environmental and health hazards, high efficiency, possibility of reusing and metal recovery are some of the advantages which are associated with bioremediation methods (Garbisu and Alkorta, 2003, Jobby et al., 2018). Phycoremediation is one of the ways of bioremediation. Phycoremediation may be defined in a broad sense as the use of macroalgae or microalgae for the removal or biotransformation of pollutants (Olguın, 2003). Algae are primary producers in ecological systems, widely distributed around the world, and closely connected with human life (Lee and Chang, 2011). Algae can serve as useful bioindicators of environmental conditions as they are abundant and diverse and responded quickly to environmental changes (Pienitz et al., 2004, Chu et al., 2019). Algae have demonstrated metal removal by living cells. Viable algae have shown promise in metal removal from domestic wastewater, synthetic media and oil sands tailing pond water (Mahdavi et al., 2012). In the present study, filamentous alga Cladophora which belongs to phylum of Chlorophyta was used. Cladophora grows by colonizing solid substratum with a zoospore that forms a basal holdfast and may persist for years, just like perennial plants (Zulkifly et al., 2013, Munir et al., 2019). Cladophora functions as an autogenic engineer, an organism that creates, modifies, and maintains habitat (term defined by Jones et al. (1994)) (Zulkifly et al., 2013). Cladophora spp. is naturally abundant worldwide.
There is a major environmental problem about the presence of pollutant elements in various environments. Therefore, a cost-effective treatment technology for the treatment of these elements is urgently required to ensure environmental health. Also, the usage of algae as indicator of these elements is important. There is not any study dealing with the accumulation of elements those have both pollutant characteristics and economic importance in algae-real mine gallery water system, despite the importance of these elements both economically and health. In addition, mine gallery waters have a toxic effect in aquatic environments and negatively affect many living things. Therefore, the use of algae to reduce the toxic effect of gallery waters is a very important issue both for the environment and for aquatic environments. This study will attract the attention of many researchers and will contribute to the literature. Therefore, our study has originality and novelty.
Section snippets
Study area
The study was carried out in the mining area of Keban region (Elazig city, Turkey). The study area is given in Fig. 1. The geologic features in Elazig-Keban region are favorable for the development of skarn type deposits. Keban Fe– and Pb–Zn skarns; and Keban Cu–Mo–W–F skarns are ones of the prominent skarn locations in the Eastern Taurus area (Yıldırım et al., 2019). The polymetallic Keban province historically experienced mining activities attributed to the Hittites dating back to 2000 BCE (
Physicochemical characteristics of mine gallery water
In the present study, EC and pH values, concentrations of Mo, Cu, Zn and Ni were determined in the mine water. The EC value ranged from 2.36 to 2.48 mS/cm (average EC 2.42 mS/cm). The pH value of the gallery water ranged from 7.42 to 7.54 (average pH 7.48). The element concentrations in gallery water were determined as follows: 1.3g/L for Mo; 5.4g/L for Cu; 4533.3g/L for Zn; and 4.1g/L for Ni. The highest element concentration in gallery water was determined as Zn and
Conclusions
The most important environmental impact of mine gallery waters is that it has a toxic effect on living things and causes environmental problems. This study was to investigate the uptake of economically important elements coming out of mine algae and their ability to reduce environmental impacts on aquatic environments. In this context, the accumulation capacities of the elements in a mine gallery water for the first time were investigated in a real study area. When BCF values were evaluated, it
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Murat Topal: Conceptualization, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. E. Is̨ıl Arslan Topal: Investigation, Writing - original draft. Erdal Öbek: Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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