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Bioleaching and engineering properties of ore materials (overview)
Published in Vladimir Litvinenko, EUROCK2018: Geomechanics and Geodynamics of Rock Masses, 2018
Anna V. Shidlovskaya, Anna A. Timchenko, Mark E. Smith
Bioleaching is used today in three different ways: dump leaching, when waste rock or low grade ore are leached where placed for disposal and usually without crushing (that is, in run-of-mine or ROM particle sizes);heap leaching, when newly mined material is deposited in a heap on an impervious surface (i.e. leach pad) and leached, usually but not always after crushing and other pre-leaching preparation such as agglomeration and introduction of a solvent (aka “pre-curing”);agitated tank leaching when ore material is deposited in a tank and leached using mechanical agitation (experimental only).
Biotechnological Treatment of Liquid and Solid Inorganic Wastes
Published in Daphne L. Stoner, Biotechnology for the Treatment of Hazardous Waste, 2017
W. D. Gould, R. G. L. McCready
Techniques for contacting ores with the leaching solution include dump leaching, heap leaching, and tank leaching.125 Leach dumps are usually located in valleys in which low grade ores of varying particle size (<1.0 m diameter) are dumped in lifts of 50 to 100 ft in height. Copper leach dumps can contain up to 4 billion tons of material. Leach solutions are introduced on the surface of the dump by sprinkling or flooding. The solution is recovered from the base of the dump and processed to recover the metals. In a heap leaching operation, the ore is placed on an impermeable surface, and the leaching solution is applied to the top of the heap. Approximately 100,000 to 500,000 tons of ore are used in a single heap. Tank leaching can be done in a standard bioreactor such as a CSTR. The technology for the bacterial leaching of metals is well developed and could be a technically and economically feasible method for the removal of metals from contaminated sludges and soils.
Leaching, bioleaching, and acid mine drainage case study
Published in Katalin Gruiz, Tamás Meggyes, Éva Fenyvesi, Engineering Tools for Environmental Risk Management – 4, 2019
H.M. Siebert, G. Florian, W. Sand, E. Vaszita, K. Gruiz, M. Csővári, G. Földing, Zs. Berta, J.T. Árgyelán
Leaching is widely used in extractive metallurgy to convert metals into soluble salts in aqueous medium. Chemical leaching-based industrial processes may apply dump leaching (from ore taken directly from the mine), heap leaching (from fine-grained crushed ore or tailings), tank leaching (ore is filled into closed reactors and the leachant flows through) or in situ leaching (in situ recovery or solution mining through boreholes drilled into metal ore deposits).
Is Near-zero Waste Production of Copper and Its Geochemically Scarce Companion Elements Feasible?
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 2022
In primary hydrometallurgical Cu production, there is furthermore commercial application of contained processes. These are: agitated tank leaching of copper ores and copper ore tailings and autoclave-based, pressurized oxidative acid leaching processes applied to processed copper ores. Agitated tank leaching of copper ores and copper ore tailings has been reported for Africa (Sole et al. 2019). In Cobre Las Cruces (Spain) an ore-derived input with 5.1% Cu is extracted with a 91.8% efficiency by pressurized oxidative acid leaching (Dreisinger 2015). In the Freeport plants in Arizona (USA) Cu is recovered from ore concentrates by pressurized oxidative leaching with an overall efficiency of about 98% (Dreisinger 2015; Gertenbach 2016; Green, Robertson and Marsden 2018). Pressurized oxidation and leaching of copper ore/pyrite mixture is practiced by Sepon Copper (Laos) (Dreisinger 2015). Solvent extraction and electrowinning are used to produce Cu from the leachate generated by pressurized oxidative leaching (Dreisinger 2015). Contained hydrometallurgy is also applied when, besides Cu, geochemically scarce companion elements are present in substantial concentrations (see section 2.2.3). Residues remaining after contained leaching can be reprocessed. This offers scope for increased recovery of Cu (Hubau et al. 2020; Shengo et al. 2021).
Acidophilic bioleaching: A Review on the Process and Effect of Organic–inorganic Reagents and Materials on its Efficiency
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 2019
Mohammad Jafari, Hadi Abdollahi, Sied Ziaedin Shafaei, Mahdi Gharabaghi, Hossein Jafari, Ata Akcil, Sandeep Panda
Mineral resources are non-renewable and are becoming exhausted by the long-term mining activities and human usage. Today, high-grade mineral resources are depleting, and processing of the lower grade and complex ores has become highly essential. Over thousands of years, bioleaching as a process was believed to occur naturally. As is the case, 2000 years ago during the Greeks and Romans, copper was extracted from mines, but in the 1940s, it has been known that bioleaching can be used as one of the metal extraction approaches from ore deposit and mines (Krebs et al. 1997). Bioleaching is the ability of microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi to extract the metal ions from solid-sulfide structure into the solution which is further extractable and recoverable (Krebs et al. 1997). Herein, microorganisms play the role of a biocatalyst. Certain microorganisms can also extract metals from non-sulfide ores. Nowadays, bioleaching is being used for extraction of base metals such as copper and zinc and also for gold production. Technologies that have been used for extraction of metals are classified as tank leaching, heap leaching, dump leaching, and in situ leaching (Bosecker 1997).