Fungal biosorption is an environmental biotechnology based on the ability of the fungal cell wall to concentrate harmful water pollutants. Among its advantages are its simplicity, high efficiency, flexibility of operation, and low cost. The biosorptive performance of fungal pellets is getting growing attention since they offer process advantages over the culture of disperse mycelia, such as an enhanced biomass separation, and a high resilience in severe environmental conditions. In this review, biosorption capacity of fungal pellets towards heavy metals, dyes, phenolic compounds, humic substances, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals was reviewed. Available data about the adsorption capacity of pellets, their removal efficiency, and the operational conditions used were collected and synthesized. The studies relying on biodegradation were discarded to present only the possibilities of fungal pellets for removing these concern pollutants through biosorption. It was found that the biosorption of complex mixtures of pollutants on fungal pellets is scarcely studied, as well as the interfering effect of anions commonly found in water and wastewater. Furthermore, there is a lack of research with real wastewater and at pilot and large scale. These topics need to be further explored to take full advantage of fungal pellets on improving the quality of aquatic systems.

This paper deals with the design of a bioretention cell and an infiltration trench in a semi- arid micro watershed. The study area was analyzed by characteristics such as slope changes (S), direction and maximum length of the urban runoff (L), and soil use (runoff coefficient, R_c). The bioretention cell was designed by the calculation of variables such as drainage area (A), concentration time (T_c), rainfall intensity (i), maximum peak drained (Q_max), inlet and outlet runoff (Q_a and Q_out, respectively), temperature (T), evaporation (Ev), potential evapotranspiration (PE_m), consumptive use (U) for tolerant plants to semi-arid climates, and soil infiltration capacity (Inf). To design the infiltration trench, only T_c, Q_max, and i were taken into account. The results showed that the designed bioretention cell could retain between 5.37% and 2.25% of runoff volume. As the efficiency of the bioretention cell can be defined by the need for additional irrigation, our results showed that the cell is inefficient in some of the dry months (November and December), even in years characterized by abundant rainfall. Besides, it was shown that the designed infiltration trench could store or infiltrate the water from typical rain events. Based on these results, it is the implementation of more Low-Impact Development (LID) for runoff management in the study area is recommended.