Biosorption behavior and mechanism of cesium-137 on Rhodosporidium fluviale strain UA2 isolated from cesium solution

• Microorganisms isolated from a cesium solution are considered as a biosorbent to remove cesium ions.
• The biosorption equilibrium is fitted well to a Langmuir model with a correlation coefficient of 0.9997.
• First attempt to explore biosorption mechanisms using PIXE and EPBS.
• Living and dead microorganisms have different biosorption mechanisms.
• The biosorption of 137Cs involved a two-step process: passive and active.

In order to identify a more efficient biosorbent for 137Cs, we have investigated the biosorption behavior and mechanism of 137Cs on Rhodosporidium fluviale (R. fluviale) strain UA2, one of the dominant species of a fungal group isolated from a stable cesium solution. We observed that the biosorption of 137Cs on R. fluviale strain UA2 was a fast and pH-dependent process in the solution composed of R. fluviale strain UA2 (5 g/L) and cesium (1 mg/L). While a Langmuir isotherm equation indicated that the biosorption of 137Cs was a monolayer adsorption, the biosorption behavior implied that R. fluviale strain UA2 adsorbed cesium ions by electrostatic attraction. The TEM analysis revealed that cesium ions were absorbed into the cytoplasm of R. fluviale strain UA2 across the cell membrane, not merely fixed on the cell surface, which implied that a mechanism of metal uptake contributed largely to the cesium biosorption process. Moreover, PIXE and EPBS analyses showed that ion-exchange was another biosorption mechanism for the cell biosorption of 137Cs, in which the decreased potassium ions were replaced by cesium ions. All the above results implied that the biosorption of 137Cs on R. fluviale strain UA2 involved a two-step process. The first step is passive biosorption that cesium ions are adsorbed to cells surface by electrostatic attraction; after that, the second step is active biosorption that cesium ions penetrate the cell membrane and accumulate in the cytoplasm.