Abstract
The accumulation of mine tailings on Earth is a serious environmental challenge. The importance for the recovery of heavy metals, together with the economic benefits of precious and base metals, is a strong incentive to develop sustainable methods to recover metals from tailings. Currently, researchers are attempting to improve the efficiency of metal recovery from tailings using bioleaching, a more sustainable method compared to traditional methods. In this work, the research status of using biological leaching technologies to recover heavy metals from tailings was reviewed. Furthermore, CiteSpace 5.7.R2 was used to visually analyze the keywords of relevant studies on biological leaching of tailings to intuitively establish the current research hotspots. We found that current research has made recent progress on influencing factors and microbial genetic data, and innovations have also been made regarding the improvement of the rate of metal leaching by biological leaching combined with other technologies. This is of great significance for the development of bioleaching technologies and industrial production of heavy metals in tailings. Finally, challenges and opportunities for bioleaching provide directions for further research by the scientific community.
Highlights
Rapid social and industrial developments have resulted in an increased demand for metals
The microorganism selection related to bioleaching needs to be further improved in several aspects [32]: (1) seeking a microorganism that can achieve oxidation reactions in alkaline environments is conducive to the extraction of alkaline minerals, and the application of biological leaching could be expanded; (2) to strengthen the tracking of microbial morphology and species changes before and after leaching, to better explore the microbial mechanism and improve leaching efficiency [33]; and (3) identification and development of chlorine-tolerant organisms can promote the utilization of seawater or brackish water in bioleaching, reduce the cost, and at the same time benefit the reality of freshwater resource shortages
In the study of biological leaching of heavy metals from tailings, the operation steps are generally as follows (Figure 2): first, the tailing samples are collected and treated, and physical and chemical analyses are carried out; second, the bacterial strains are screened and identified, enriched in a sterile environment, and the bacterial solution is preacidified; a certain amount of tailing sample and bacterium fluid is placed in a 250 mL conical flask, the blank control group is set up, and all conical flasks are placed in a constant temperature oscillating shaker at an appropriate temperature for the bioleaching experiment
Summary
Rapid social and industrial developments have resulted in an increased demand for metals. In the city of Vicosa do Ceara/CE in northeastern Brazil, Fabio et al (2021) assessed the impact of an abandoned copper mine on the environmental quality of the ecosystem through a comprehensive ecological and biogeochemical analysis Their results showed that there was still a large amount of copper in the waste rock of the abandoned copper mine after 30 years of weathering, and drainage from the mine significantly reduced the aquatic macroinvertebrates and increased the copper content in living organisms [5]. Advances in molecular biology techniques and their applications in biosynthesis to detect and identify organisms have expanded our understanding of the interactions of metallic microbes and their important role in metal extraction and recovery [14] This provides a good impetus for the industrial application of heavy metals from biological leaching of tailings. The challenges and opportunities for the recovery of heavy metals from tailings by biological leaching are discussed, which will provide a valuable reference for the full exploitation and utilization of secondary resources and the industrial development of the recovery of heavy metals from tailings using biological leaching technologies
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