Bioaccumulation of Cr(III) ions by Blue Green-alga Spirulina sp. Part II. Mathematical Modeling

In the present paper bioaccumulation of Cr(III) ions by blue-green algae Spirulina sp. is discussed. We found that the process consisted of two stages: passive in which Cr(III) ions are bound to the surface of cells, identical with biosorption and active, metabolism-dependent, in which Cr(III) ions are transported into the cellular interior. The passive stage occurs in both living and non-living cells and the active-only in living biomass. Two distinctive mathematical models of the process were proposed. The first was physical model basing on the identified mechanism of the process. In the second model, artificial neural networks were proposed.