Centre for Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India.

Heavy metals like cadmium and chromium in industrial effluent streams pose a serious environmental problem. Chitosan provides high surface area and a specific affinity for adsorption of these metals from aqueous system. Chitosan has been reported to be an efficient heavy metal scavenger due to amino group. The nano-composite chitosan beads can be used in packed bed reactors. Chitin is the most abundant natural biopolymer. Hence de-acetylation of chitin to chitosan and subsequent chemical modifications needed to enhance the bioadsorbents can also be effectively reused for the treatment. Chitosan occur naturally in the environment in large quantities and run second in abundance to cellulose. Ecofriendly chitosan nano-composites provide high surface area and a specific affinity for heavy metal adsorption from aqueous systems. Thus, Chitosan have the potential to reduce and to solve some environmental pollution problems for creating Greener environment and chitosan is renewable polymers.

Keywords:Bioremediation, Chitosan, Cadmium, Chromium, Heavy metal