Chemical precipitation and filtration, chemical oxidation/reduction,
electrochemical treatment, evaporation, ion exchange,
reverse osmosis and membrane technology are some of the most
common procedures used for metal ions removal from industrial
wastewaters [9–13]. However, chemical precipitation and electrochemical
treatment are ineffective when the metal ions concentration
in solution is below 100 mg/L [9,14–17]. Ion exchange,
membrane separation technology and adsorption processes with
activated carbon can be extremely expensive and thus, unfeasible
for the treatment of large wastewater volumes with low concentration
of heavy metals [13]. Biosorption is an innovative technology
that employs dead biomass to recover heavy metals from
aqueous solutions [18,19]. It has advantages over other wastewater
treatment technologies because it is an inexpensive and environmentally
friendly technology [8] that uses wastes from
industrial operations or materials abundant in nature, such as seaweeds
[20]. Beyond that, it is an effective technique for the
removal of metal ions present in low concentrations [21]. Fungi
[22–24], yeasts [25–27] and seaweeds [28–30] are examples of
biomass used for heavy metals removal from aqueous solutions.