Cadmium removal from contaminated soil by tunable biopolymers

An elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) composed of a polyhistidine tail (ELPH12) was exploited as a tunable, metal-binding biopolymer with high affinity toward cadmium. By taking advantage of the property of ELPH12 to undergo a reversible thermal precipitation, easy recovery of the sequestered cadmium from contaminated water was demonstrated as the result of a simple temperature change. In this study, batch soil washing experiments were performed to evaluate the feasibility of using ELPH12 as an environmentally benign strategy for removing cadmium from contaminated soil. The stability constant (log KL) for the cadmium-ELPH12 complex was determined to be 6.8, a value similar to that reported for the biosurfactant rhamnolipid. Two washings with 1.25 mg/mL of ELPH12 were able to remove more than 55% of the bound cadmium as compared to only 8% removal with ELP containing no histidine tail or 21% removal using the same concentration of EDTA. Unlike rhamnolipid from Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027, which adsorbs extensively to soil, less than 10% of ELPH12 was adsorbed under all soil washing conditions. As a result, a significantly lower concentration of ELPH12 (0.036 mM as compared to 5-10 mM of biosurfactants) was required to achieve similar extraction efficiencies. However, cadmium recovery by simple precipitation was incomplete due to the displacement of bound cadmium by zinc ions present in soil. Owing to its benign nature, ease of production, and selective tailoring of the metal binding domain toward any target metals of interest, ELP biopolymers may find utility as an effective extractant for heavy metal removal from contaminated soil or ore processing.