Metallurgical Applications of Bacterial Leaching and Related Microbiological Phenomena

Metallurgical Applications of Bacterial Leaching and Related Microbiological Phenomena is a collection of papers presented at the International Symposium on Metallurgical Applications of Bacterial Leaching and Related Microbiological Phenomena, held in New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, Socorro, New Mexico on August 3-5, 1977. This book is organized into three sections encompassing 26 chapters. Section I emphasizes the role of microorganisms in the kinetics of leaching and similar metallurgical processes by stimulating a strong interaction between microbiologists and metallurgists. This section also discusses the basic study of microorganisms, in the strictly microbiological aspects of metal extraction and attendant conversion kinetics, and in the practical, engineering aspects of extraction. Section II deals with the microbiological leaching of waste materials, such as fly ash, slags, and jarosite-type leach residues. This section also describes a microbiological process for the recovery of sulfur in its elemental form from sulfate and sulfuric acid-containing aqueous wastes that are to be released in the environment. A microbiological leaching process for the removal of inorganic sulfur contained in coal is also described in this section. Considerable chapters in Section III are devoted to the specific applications of bacterial leaching, the optimization of the leaching conditions, and process optimization based upon economic considerations. This section also examines the advantages of large-scale testing compared with laboratory-testing. Workers in the fields of microbiology, biophysics, biochemistry, mineral processing and preparation, extractive and/or chemical metallurgy, mining engineering, and many related disciplines, including chemical and bioengineering, will find this book invaluable.