Using microorganisms to recover metals

Biological processes have been used for thousands of years to make cheese, wine, and beer. During the past few hundred years these processes have been employed to process sewage. Increasingly, microbes are being used to clean up a wide variety of toxic chemical wastes that have been dumped into the environment. Scientists are currently examining the possible use of microbes to detoxify naturally occurring toxic selenium-bearing water at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge. The mining and minerals industries also use biological processes to remove impurities from ores, cut processing costs, and treat some metallic ores that previously were too difficult or too expensive to process by traditional methods. In this article, the term 'mining industry' applies to the extraction of ore whereas the term 'minerals industry' applies to processing the ore. Applications of biotechnology in the mining and minerals industries are expected to increase. The paper discusses the use of microbial leaching in the copper, uranium, gold, and manganese mining industries; treatments of mine wastes; the treatment of cyanide solution, and research into bioleaching, biosorption, and genetic engineering