Thiobacillus ferrooxidans is a gram-negative, highly acidophilic (pH 1.5 to 2.0), autotrophic bacterium that obtains its energy through the oxidation of ferrous iron or reduced inorganic sulfur compounds. It is usually dominant in the mixed bacterial populations that are used industrially for the extraction of metals such as copper and uranium from their ores. More recently, these bacterial con...

Cyanide is the basic component of many industrial processes, among which gold processing, being very toxic or even lethal. Treatment, with help microorganisms, can be used effectively to reduce load harmful chemicals into environment. The combination microbiological methods and molecular tools allowed inferring presence a dominant population composition varied both in places origin method used....

Over the past decade the concern about toxic metals in freshwater has increased. Environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act have forced industries that produce metal containing wastewater to treat their wastewater prior to discharge. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of a novel method for the minimization of heavy metals in the wastewater from the mining industry. A very ...

In this article, the efficiency of microwave pretreatment, which is an environmentally friendly, low-energy consuming method for recovery from refractory gold-silver ores, was investigated. The ore sample belonged to oxidized Bolkardağ deposit, contains carbonate (calcite, dolomite, smithsonite, hydrozincite), silicate (quartz, hemimorphite), sulfate (beudantite, plumbo-jarosite), and iron oxy/...

Cyanide-bearing waste water from'gold mining is usually decontaminated by oxidation so that the dissolved metals are precipitated as hydroxides. The disadvantages of this method are high consumption of chemicals and the formation and liberation of toxic compounds. Various bacterial and fungal strains capable of degrading cyanides or having a high potential for metal adsorption were isolated fro...

This is a study of the impact of cyanide from mining waste on riparian communities, primarily vegetation, near Whitewood Creek, downstream from Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota. Cyanide is used in gold processing, and the effluent, until fairly recently, was discharged directly into Gold Run Creek which empties into Whitewood Creek. Vegetation, soil, and water were collected from four ...

A total gold extraction of 70.2% could only be reached via direct cyanidation from a refractory As-, Sand C-bearing gold concentrate calcine, and the gold extraction varied noticeably with different size fractions. The reasons for unsatisfactory gold extraction from the calcine were studied through analyses of chemical composition, chemical phase and SEM-EDS of different sizes of particles. It ...