Remoción de Mercurio en Aguas Contaminadas mediante Microorganismos Tolerantes, una Aproximación a la Biorremediacion Microbiana

Abstract

Mercury is one of the most toxic chemicals in the environment and in general for living beings, because of these countries around the world has banned its use in production processes, as the income of this metal to ecosystems generates an accumulation along the food chain. In Colombia more precisely in the region of the Mojana bounded by the Cauca, San Jorge and Magdalena rivers is one of the richest in terms of biodiversity ecosystems in the world, it is being seriously affected by contamination by heavy metals especially mercury due the large gold mining in the area [1], apart from the region of the Mojana, locally found the river Bogotá one of the most polluted rivers by heavy metals, suspended solids and low environmental quality in the world [2]. On another level, from its source to its mouth on the Magdalena River receives several volleys of biological, chemical and physical contaminants thus making it the largest sewer Colombia. Also, some time ago the rivers have been subjected to a process of mercury contamination, highly related to gold mining located in the proximity of these tributaries. Therefore it is necessary to locally develop technology aimed at the removal of mercury or heavy metals. Conventional treatments could not remove anthropogenic contribution in its entirety, because large volumes of water in which the concentration of metals is of the order of parts per million are handled, which makes it expensive and difficult to remove these metals from water bodies, while treatments with microorganisms being recently recognized by the scientific community as they present a more economical and efficient when removing heavy metals concentrations with minimal alternative. For this we are located in the upper basin of the river Bogotá in the municipalities of Villa Pinzon and Chocontá, to appreciate closely mercury pollution and obtain samples of the ecosystem and thus ensure obtaining these issue tolerant microorganisms. These samples were provided by Professor Angela Maria Jaramillo Londoño Group on Environmental Sustainability research group of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at the University of Applied and Environmental Sciences (UDCA). Of the samples obtained were reached to get 10 Mushroom tolerant mercury in aqueous medium, which after testing tolerance and resistance, were 6 different strains of fungi capable of removing or capture mercury in different percentages ranging between 55% -60 %. It was seen that fungi are able to tolerate high concentrations of mercury, exploit metabolic pathways, biodiversity and generate a new horizon in Colombia for water treatment and thus it is expected that mining companies or companies Agrochemical, they can optimize their production processes minimizing impacts to the environment and society to be able to remove mercury discharges as treatments at the end of the tube, and why not recover mercury to enter it in industrial processes.