Abstract

Biomining through bioleaching and bio-oxidation aims at recovering desired metals at the required specifications with lower environmental impact and costs from ores and waste streams. Research and developments related to the process technology and efficient implementation of this approach are advanced worldwide. Small particles of gold, a metal of higher interest, are mostly found in a matrix of sulfide-based minerals and not affordably recovered with conventional approaches encompassing cyanidation, pyrometallurgy, extreme heating (roasting), oxidation of ore samples at high pressure. Recently, advances in bio-oxidation have been made in addressing scientific and technical challenges that arise during the pilot and demonstration scales in the operations units in bioreactors and heaps. Through including high-throughput bacterial growth data and better process knowledge of the extraction and recovery approaches, bio-oxidation becomes more economically feasible and efficient. More advancements are necessary to evaluate the wide range of mineralogical structure of ores being processed, microbiological, and physicochemical that can significantly influence the bio-oxidation reaction within the different types of reactors (heap and continuously stirred tank reactors), the microbial interactions between metal and microbes, geographical localizations of the mining sector, economic as well as data interpretation by using advanced artificial intelligence methods toward obtaining optimized operation and efficiency. This review covers important advances and developments and associated industrial and academic research and challenges from the past few years for gold bio-oxidation.

摘要

通过生物浸出和生物氧化进行的生物采矿旨在以所需规格从矿石和废物流中回收所需金属，同时降低环境影响和成本。与该方法的工艺技术和有效实施相关的研究和开发在世界范围内处于领先地位。小颗粒金是一种更受关注的金属，主要存在于硫化物矿物基质中，采用传统方法（包括氰化、火法冶金、极端加热（焙烧）、高压氧化矿石样品）无法以经济的方式回收。最近，生物氧化在解决生物反应器和堆操作单元中试和示范规模期间出现的科学和技术挑战方面取得了进展。通过包含高通量细菌生长数据和对提取和回收方法的更好的工艺知识，生物氧化变得更加经济可行和高效。需要更多的进步来评估正在处理的矿石的广泛矿物学结构、微生物学和物理化学，这可以显着影响不同类型反应器（堆和连续搅拌罐反应器）内的生物氧化反应、金属之间的微生物相互作用和微生物、采矿部门的地理定位、经济以及数据解释，通过使用先进的人工智能方法获得优化的操作和效率。