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Updated: Sep 24, 2025
Quantification of Heavy Metals and Other Inorganic Contaminants on the Productivity of Microalgae
Published on: July 10, 2015
Measuring heavy metal ions in water using nature existed microalgae as medium based on terahertz technology
Yongni Shao1, Yutian Wang2, Di Zhu2
1Terahertz Technology Innovation Research Institute, Terahertz Spectrum and Imaging Technology Cooperative Innovation Center, Shanghai Key Lab of Modern Optical System, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 JunGong Road, Shanghai 200093, China; Shanghai Institute of Intelligent Science and Technology, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
Abstract:
Heavy metal pollution in water seriously affects human health. The disadvantages of traditional metal ion detection methods involve long and cumbersome chemical pretreatment in the early stage, and large volume of samples. In this study, microalgae were used as the medium, and terahertz spectroscopy technology was employed to collect the changes of material components in it, so as to deduce the types and concentrations of heavy metal pollution in water. Through the partial least square(PLS), we establish the prediction model of heavy metal concentration, and the results show that the best detection time for Pb2+ is 6 h and Ni2+ is 18 h. The principal component analysis(PCA) shows that β-carotene is the most affected substance. Afterward we collect five real surface waters in East China and verify that the judgment accuracy of Pb2+ and Ni2+ are 100% and 93.2% respectively. The results indicate that the time is shorter than the traditional pretreatment time from more than 20-6 h, the sample volume is reduced from 50 mL to 10 mL, the detection accuracy is improved from 10 ng/mL to 1 ng/mL. In a word, we provide a new fast and real-time method for biological monitoring of heavy metal pollution in water.
