| Title | From understanding the rate limitations of bioleaching mechanisms to improved bioleach process design |
|---|---|
| ID_Doc | 14892 |
| Authors | Petersen, J |
| Title | From understanding the rate limitations of bioleaching mechanisms to improved bioleach process design |
| Year | 2023 |
| Published | |
| Abstract | While bioleaching has become established technology for the leaching of refractory gold concentrates and in the heap leaching of copper sulfide minerals, many other applications, although demonstrated at the laboratory scale, have not found significant uptake in industrial biomining. The reasons for this are manifold, but generally relate back to engineering constraints in operating processes at large scale while remaining economically viable.The paper unpacks acidophile sulfide bioleaching mechanisms within bioreactors into various sub-processes and analyses them in terms of their rate limitations, such as gas-liquid mass transfer of oxygen and CO2, diffusion constraints between and within mineral particles, competing side reactions etc. It becomes clear that microbial metabolic reactions are generally not what limits the kinetics of bioleaching reactions overall but rather the reaction environment. Improved process design to enhance the economic performance of bioleaching therefore needs to target the slowest sub-process in the bioleaching mechanism, which is rarely the biological one.Conventional tank and heap bioleaching processes are discussed in this context and routes taken towards their improvement discussed. Further, various promising novel concepts in biomining, such as leaching with biogenic lixiviants, phytomining and tailings leaching are evaluated within this framework, in each case identifying the potentially limiting sub-processes. It becomes clear that the relative 'slowness' of these sub-processes prohibits exploitation through designed active industrial processes; they can, however, still be facilitated through suitably designed 'passive' processes in which the time taken for slow processes is less of an economic constraint. While this is an obvious approach in bioremediation, it can also be employed for the economic recovery of value from otherwise sub-economic mineral deposits and waste materials through heap bioleaching. This way it can also play a role in the drive towards a circular economy. |
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hydromet.2023.106148 |
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