US EPA

1440609 

Journal Article 

BioMinE: An integrated project for developing biohydrometallurgy in Europe-Executive summary of its activities and outputs after three years 

Morin; Dominique H. R. 

2008 

1 

Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China
ISSN: 1003-6326 

18 

6 

1328-1335 

WOS:000262773900007 

Biohydrometallurgy is the offspring of the unexpected union
of biotechnology and metallurgy. From specific properties of some extreme biotopes, active
principles of interactions between microbial metabolisms and minerals have been extracted to be
used as efficient metallurgical processes. Many profitable industrial operations based on these
bioprocesses have been running to recover copper, gold, uranium or cobalt for instance and many
other applications have been designed. Europe was quite active in this area in the past, but
currently the leadership is in South Africa, America and Australia. BioMinE (Biotechnology of
Metal-bearing material In Europe) is a large integrated project launched with the support of the
European Commision. It is aimed at stimulating synergies between the most relevant universities,
research and industrial organizations to develop new concepts in this technical field that allow
a better exploitation of the mineral resources in the future. The European non-ferrous metals
mining industry has initiated and developed the BioMinE project as they identified the need to
find new processes for metal extraction from resources of today and of tomorrow. 

biohydrometallurgy; BioMinE project; biotechnology