Metabolomic Analysis Reveals Contributions of Citric and Citramalic Acids to Rare Earth Bioleaching by a Paecilomyces Fungus.

Vanessa L Brisson,Wei-Qin Zhuang,Lisa Alvarez-Cohen

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.03008

Abstract

Conventional methods for extracting rare earth elements from monazite ore require high energy inputs and produce environmentally damaging waste streams. Bioleaching offers a potentially more environmentally friendly alternative extraction process. In order to better understand bioleaching mechanisms, we conducted an exo-metabolomic analysis of a previously isolated rare earth bioleaching fungus from the genus Paecilomyces (GenBank accession numbers KM874779 and KM 874781) to identify contributions of compounds exuded by this fungus to bioleaching activity. Exuded compounds were compared under two growth conditions: growth with monazite ore as the only phosphate source, and growth with a soluble phosphate source (K2HPO4) added. Overall metabolite profiling, in combination with glucose consumption and biomass accumulation data, reflected a lag in growth when this organism was grown with only monazite. We analyzed the relationships between metabolite concentrations, rare earth solubilization, and growth conditions, and identified several metabolites potentially associated with bioleaching. Further investigation using laboratory prepared solutions of 17 of these metabolites indicated statistically significant leaching contributions from both citric and citramalic acids. These contributions (16.4 and 15.0 mg/L total rare earths solubilized) accounted for a portion, but not all, of the leaching achieved with direct bioleaching (42 ± 15 mg/L final rare earth concentration). Additionally, citramalic acid released significantly less of the radioactive element thorium than did citric acid (0.25 ± 0.01 mg/L compared to 1.18 ± 0.01 mg/L), suggesting that citramalic acid may have preferable leaching properties for a monazite bioleaching process.

Highlights

Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical for a variety of technologies (US DOE, 2011; Alonso et al, 2012)
Several previous studies have investigated the potential for bioleaching of REEs from monazite by phosphate solubilizing microorganisms (PSMs), including both fungi and bacteria (Brisson et al, 2016; Corbett et al, 2017, 2018; Fathollahzadeh et al, 2018b,c, 2019)
Rare earth element solubilization was greater for the monaziteonly condition, when a soluble phosphate source was not provided, reaching concentrations of 42 ± 15 mg/L total REEs after 6 days of leaching (Figure 1A)

Summary

Introduction

Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical for a variety of technologies (US DOE, 2011; Alonso et al, 2012). A rare earth phosphate mineral, is one of the main ores used for commercial REE production (Gupta and Krishnamurthy, 1992; Rosenblum and Fleischer, 1995). Conventional monazite extraction methods co-extract Th, which must be separated from REEs in downstream processing (Gupta and Krishnamurthy, 1992). Several recent studies have investigated bioleaching REEs from substrates other than monazite This includes leaching REEs from bastnaesite, another important REE bearing ore (Zhang et al, 2018), and bioleaching to recover REEs from waste products including spent catalysts, rare earth magnets, and coal fly ash (Auerbach et al, 2019; Jin et al, 2019; Park and Liang, 2019)

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Results

Conclusion