Protection of environment is of huge alarm because the discharge of heavy metals as effluent from the metal finishing, electroplating and metal extraction process has amplified and they cause dangerous problems to human beings. Biosorption using microorganisms as bioadsorbent for the elimination of heavy metals appears to be a valuable remediation technology compared to physico-chemical methods. The current work utilizes the dead biomass of Fusarium solani as bioadsorbent for the exclusion of nickel from nickel electroplating effluent. F. solani was isolated from the effluent discharged soil and the uptake of nickel from the effluent (25%) at different ranges of pH (3,4,5,6,7,8, 9), temperature (20ºC, 25ºC, 30ºC, 35ºC , 40ºC) and incubation period (1,3,5,7,9,11,13 and 15 days) were optimized by inoculating 1g of the bioadsorbent and the percentage removal of nickel was determined. The biomass after biosorption was treated with 0.1M HCl and 0.1M HNO3 (desorbing agent) to remove nickel. The results obtained signified that highest removal of nickel was observed in pH 5 (90%) at 30ºC (89%) on 9th day of incubation (92%). F.solani under optimized conditions removed nickel to a larger amount of 85%. The desorbing agent HNO3 desorbed 83% of nickel from the fungal biomass which demonstrates that the desorbed biomass can be used again for further sorption assays. Hence, the biosorptive potential of F. solani may be utilized effectively for the removal of heavy metals from electroplating industrial effluent, which is an ecofriendly technology.
