Computer-munching microbes: Metal leaching from electronic scrap by bacteria and fungi

Bio-Reclamation of Strategic and Energy Critical Metals from Secondary Resources

“…After a prolonged time (over 3 days) it slowed down due to the buffering effect of weak acids. Similar trends on pH profile with in-situ production of organic acids in the bioleaching of electronic waste, red mud, cracked catalysts and monazite ores have been observed in earlier studies [28,[33][34][35][36]. Reed et al [36] reported that 60% of the organic acids, mainly gluconic acid, can be produced within the initial 24 h. Using the isolated microbial culture BH1, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus GSN8; BH24, Pseudomonas frederiksbergensis 37; and A1, Talaromyces purpureogenus for producing gluconic acid were however less effective in bioleaching of REE than the bacterium Gluconobacter oxydans.…”

Assessment of Physico Chemical, Microbial Characteristics and Heavy Metals Contamination at E Waste Dumping Sites at Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

“…These environmental characteristics support growth of various microbes which was indicated in results of microbiological analysis. The mean total plate counts (TPC) of each soil sample ranged from 2.7x10 -6 to 3.8x10 -5 colony forming units (cfu) per gram of soil presented in table 8. It was found that various bacterial groups were present on different sampling sites.…”

Copper leaching from waste electric cables by biohydrometallurgy

“…Bioleaching technology was only investigated recently to process polymetallic wastes such as printed circuit boards (PCB) (Wang and et al, 2009;Yang et al, 2009;Liang et al, 2010;Xiang et al, 2010), electronic scraps (Brandl et al, 2001;Ilyas et al, 2007) shredder residues (Lewis et al, 2011). For this purpose, chemolithotrophic bacteria from the specie Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans were mostly studied as a mean to regenerate ferric from ferrous iron.…”

“…For this purpose, chemolithotrophic bacteria from the specie Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans were mostly studied as a mean to regenerate ferric from ferrous iron. High metal recoveries were reported for bioleaching of Cu from electronic scrap (Brandl et al, 2001) and PCB (Wang et al, 2009;Yang et al, 2009). In previous projects we have investigated the feasibility of bacterially assisted leaching to bring zero-valent copper in solution from similar material.…”