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Solid Waste Management
Published in Anand Ramanathan, Babu Dharmalingam, Vinoth Thangarasu, Advances in Clean Energy, 2020
Anand Ramanathan, Babu Dharmalingam, Vinoth Thangarasu
Metals are being recovered through bioleaching and biohydrometallurgy; these are techniques that are of great importance for sustainable development in metallurgy and mineral processing, especially for phosphorus, and will lead to an improved environment and economy (Johnson 2014). They are considered as feasible methods for the recovery and recycling of basic, costly, and critical metals from minimal-grade ores, mine waste, and screenings (Fashola, Ngole-Jeme, and Babalola 2016). In this, they use microbes for their potential role in recovery of metals. Biotechnological studies have been made on microbes with respect to three different metal resistance mechanisms, which have made a pathway for leaching metal, metal recovery from their ores, and heavy metal treatments (Mehrotra and Sreekrishnan 2017). Research has to be done to develop and explore the challenges and opportunities posed by the use of micro-organisms as biosorbents, mining-related pollution, regulation, and the futuristic development of industrial-scale techniques (Feng, Yang, and Wang 2015).
Environmental Biotechnology
Published in Firdos Alam Khan, Biotechnology Fundamentals, 2020
Microbial leaching involves the process of dissolution of metals from ore-bearing rocks using microorganisms. Recently, bacterial activity has been implicated in the weathering, leaching, and deposition of mineral ores. The new discipline created by the marriage between biotechnology and metallurgy is known as biohydrometallurgy, bioleaching, or biomining. Conventional metallurgy involves smelting of ores at high temperatures. This involves high energy costs and leads to pollution. That copper could be leached from its ores by the activity of a bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferroxidans, was discovered in 1947. This discovery opened the way to biohydrometallurgy for extraction of uranium in Canada and gold in South Africa. This technology is now commercially exploited in several countries for the extraction of copper, arsenic, nickel, zinc, etc. Microbes useful for metal recovery depend upon the temperature of the recovery process. Microbial technology is helpful in recovery of ores that cannot be economically processed with chemical methods as they contain only low-grade ores. During the separation of high-grade ores, large quantities of low-grade ore are produced and are discarded into waste heaps, from where they reach the environment.
Environmental biotechnology
Published in Firdos Alam Khan, Biotechnology Fundamentals, 2018
Firdos Alam Khan, Firdos Alam Khan
Microbial leaching involves the process of dissolution of metals from ore-bearing rocks using microorganisms. Recently, bacterial activity has been implicated in the weathering, leaching, and deposition of mineral ores. The new discipline created by the marriage between biotechnology and metallurgy is known as biohydrometallurgy, bioleaching, or biomining. Conventional metallurgy involves smelting of ores at high temperatures. This involves high energy costs and also leads to pollution. That copper could be leached from its ores by the activity of a bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferroxidans, was discovered in 1947. This discovery opened the way to biohydrometallurgy for extraction of uranium in Canada and gold in South Africa. This technology is now commercially exploited in several countries for the extraction of copper, arsenic, nickel, zinc, etc. Microbes useful for metal recovery depend on the temperature of the recovery process. Microbial technology is helpful in the recovery of ores that cannot be economically processed with chemical methods, since they contain only low-grade ores. During the separation of high-grade ores, large quantities of low-grade ore are produced and are discarded into waste heaps, from where they reach the environment.
Recovery of Cobalt from Secondary Resources: A Comprehensive Review
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 2022
Michael Chandra, Dawei Yu, Qinghua Tian, Xueyi Guo
Pyrometallurgical processes are less effective for recovering cobalt from these secondary resources because of the material complexity and the emission of harmful gas. Nevertheless, they can be readily applied to an industrial-scale application. Comparatively, the hydrometallurgical processes are further studied due to better cobalt recovery performance and lower investment cost. However, they potentially produce large amounts of wastewater. The pyro-hydrometallurgical process appears to be a great option for treating superalloys, cemented carbides, and rechargeable batteries. Biohydrometallurgy is more environmentally friendly but comes with low efficiency and unstable production due to the utilization of living organisms. To conclude, cobalt recovery from secondary resources will continue to show great prospects, despite the challenges that have been mentioned, requiring further research and development.
Valorization of resources from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries: A review
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Francine Duarte Castro, Mentore Vaccari, Laura Cutaia
Biohydrometallurgy can be defined as “the field of applications resulting from the control of natural (biochemical) processes of interactions between microbes and minerals to recover valuable metals” (Morin et al., 2006, pp. 69–70). On the industrial scale, its main biohydrometallurgy is primarily used for bioleaching (Morin et al., 2006). Different microorganisms can perform bioleaching, especially chemolithotrophic prokaryotes, heterotrophic bacteria, and fungi (Table 4).