Abstract—The toxicity of heavy metals has important role in thermophilic microorganism growth in bioleaching of e-waste. The mobile phone touch screen has high concentration of several heavy metals that caused negative effect on bacterial activity and metals recovery. In the present investigation, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans was adapted to powder of mobile phone touch screen. The serial subculturing approach was used for bacterial adaptation with heavy metals. The experiments began with 0.1 wt/vol.% pulp density eventually increase to 2.5 wt/vol.%. All experiment conducted in 100 ml 9k medium at the initial pH 2 and 2% (v/v) inoculums. The effective parameters such as pH, Eh, Fe3+, cell concentration were studied and the results confirmed as well as each other. Indium recovery for adapted cell, non-adapted cell and control were 100%_(adapted), 10%_{(non-adapted)}, 1%_(control), respectively. Finally, it is essential that the bacteria become adapted with the heavy metals and consequently an acceptable bioleaching process will be achieved.

Index Terms—Bioleaching, adaptation, e-waste, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans.

The authors are with Biotechnology Group, Chemical Engineering Department, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran (email: mousavi_m@modares.ac.ir).

Cite: Omid Rezaei, Seyyed Mohammad Mousavi, Fatemeh Pourhossein, "Recovery of Indium from Mobile Phone Touch Screen Using Adapted Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 117-124, 2018.