It has been shown that the precipitation of bismuth orthovanadate from a fly ash leachate is a promising method of vanadium recovery. BiVO4 obtained after appropriate heat treatment can be sold as a pigment. The yield of recovery of solubilised vanadium is equal to 68% and the precipitate is free from nickel impurity. The precipitate is insoluble in the solutions with pH ≥ 3. In more acidic media the solubility of precipitate increases with the decreasing pH. The solubility of the precipitate increases also with the increasing concentration of chloride ions.

Extracellular laccase produced by the wood-rotting fungus Cerrena unicolor was immobilised covalently on the mesostructured siliceous foam (MCF) and three hexagonally ordered mesoporous silicas (SBA-15) with different pore sizes. The enzyme was attached covalently via glutaraldehyde (GLA) or by simple adsorption and additionally crosslinked with GLA. The experiments indicated that laccase bound by covalent attachment remains very active and stable. The best biocatalysts were MCF and SBA-15 with Si-F moieties on their surface. Thermal inactivation of immobilised and native laccase at 80°C showed a biphasic-type activity decay, that could be modelled with 3- parameter isoenzyme model. It appeared that immobilisation did not significantly change the mechanism of activity loss but stabilised a fraction of a stable isoform. Examination of time needed for 90% initial activity loss revealed that immobilisation prolonged that time from 8 min (native enzyme) up to 155 min (SBA-15SF).

Biosensors are a crucial part of most of bioanalytical diagnostic devices and systems. Due to semiconductor technologies, a great progress in diminution of costs and miniaturisation as well as an increased reliability of these devices was achieved. Application of

molecular and biological techniques in the detection process has contributed to a real increase in sensitivity, selectivity, the detection limit and the number of analytes to be detected. Different transducers of chemical parameters into electrical output signals are applied in these devices. Electrochemical principles, both potentiometric and amperometric, are opted for due to their simplicity of application and extremely low costs of such biosensors. Ion sensitive field effect transistors (ISFETs) may be easily integrated into the required electronics, resulting in their miniaturisation. Further miniaturisation may be attained by development of miniaturised total analytical systems (uTAS). To ensure competitive parameters of these biosensors, optimal methods of immobilisation of biochemical receptors (ionophores, enzymes, antibodies, etc.) should be developed. A review of the work by the authors related to these problems is presented in the article.