microbial leaching is economically important for the mining of
Answers
This method is used to recover many different precious metals like copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver, and nickel. Microorganisms are used because they can: lower the production costs.
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Answer:
Microbial leaching is the process by which metals are dissolved from ore bearing rocks using microorganisms. For the last 10 centuries, microorganisms have assisted in the recovery of copper dissolved in drainage from water. Thus biomining has emerge as an important branch of biotechnology in recent years. Microbial technology renders helps in case of recovery of ores which cannot be economically processed with chemical methods, because they contain low grade metals. Therefore, large quantity of low grade ores are produced during the separation of high grade ores. The low grade ores are discarded in waste heaps which enter in the environment. The low grade ores contain significant amount of nickel, lead, and zinc ores which could be processed by microbial leaching. Bioleaching of uranium and copper has been widely commercialized. But large scale leaching process may cause environmental problems when dump is not managed properly. This results in seepage of leach fluids containing large quantity of metals and low pH into nearby natural water supplies and ground water.
- ,,Bioleaching is cheaper than chemical extraction, safer for the environment, and more efficient in extracting metals with low concentration in ores.
..., It is performed by iron and sulfide oxidizing bacteria or acid producing fungus.
....Bacteria recycle the major leaching reagent, like ferric iron, and perform further oxidation steps while gaining energy from the electron transfer.
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